Storiesonline.net
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                                10% Book2
                              by John Wales

Copyright© 2008 by John Wales


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Description: The further problems of those in Book 1.

Codes: mf Mf ScFi rom
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Book Two

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Chapter 1


Nicki held my hand with unaccustomed intensity. This is what steadied my wife as she moved all over the old brocade couch in her excitement. She eagerly asked, "What did he do then?" Her enjoyment, even at my discomfort, made me feel happy for her.

We were sitting comfortably in stately room that I had been told to stay out of when I was a boy. The house was old but maintained with care and attention to details. The decor was dated of course but seemed to fit well with the current surroundings. Some things never really go out of style.

Grandma Ellen sat primly in her high backed wooden chair. She had a full head of hair that was still about half brunette while the other half was grey going to white. The mixture of colours gave her a very sophisticated look. She was very alert and that was because she kept her mind and body active. She was tall for those of her day but fit in well with the way people grew today. Her clothing was of an old style but she wore modern dresses too.

She said with a very ladylike voice and mischievous grin, "When Joyce picked up her son, she put pressure on this boy's abdomen and he — he made some loud noises. Those sitting in the room tried hard to not laugh but our smiles were just impossible to hide."

Nicki was under no such constraints and laughed as she looked at me. She would not hurt my feelings but she didn't mind abusing them good naturedly on occasion. The small grin on my face was enough for her to continue.

I had to reply in my own defence, "I have met a few women in my travels that were just as fragrant as the guys I know. They just try harder to hide it."

It was fun to sit here and talk. Grandma was a retired nurse of sixty. She was full of life. She was thin and looked ever so much a lady. She had a wicked sense of humour that came out at the least provocation. Her looks hid that she had few pretensions and didn't mind discussing some facets of our lives much more graphically than was really wanted or called for.

She lived alone in a fairly large older home in downtown Orillia. Grampa passed away a year ago. This city was thirty five kilometres north of Barrie which was in turn a hundred and fifty kilometres north of Toronto. This part of Ontario was very beautiful, maybe in part because it's not populated very densely. There was a lot of good farmland but there was rock near the surface in many areas. Some of the land was rugged which meant some good lakes for fishing and a great many areas to hunt.

My name's Herb Stewart. I'm a firefighter and a paramedic. I liked to fight fires. In a way, I guess, I was always fascinated by them. The paramedic part was just my wish to know what to do when an emergency happened. What's more, it was a family tradition being in medicine in one way or another. When I was young I had seen accidents where people needed help and I didn't know what to do. It took time to be trained as a firefighter and longer to be qualified as a paramedic. This was an ongoing education because I planned on using my free time at the station to learn more about medicine.

My Uncle John was a doctor in Manitoba. He was the one that got me interested in joining a paramedic program. Other family members were in medicine too like Grandma Ellen. She was a nurse.

I finally had the chance to join the family profession and felt good about it. I sometimes had to deal with a lot of gore when I went to the scene of a traffic accident. If everything worked out I could continue to learn and maybe one day be a Physician's Assistant. It would be four or five more years after that for me to be a doctor but I still didn't know if that was for me or not.

Nicki, my pretty wife, is now sitting beside me. I met her almost as soon as she arrived in Orillia nearly seven years ago. Since then we have been friends though we had our rough spots over the years. Everybody, including ourselves, knew that we would one day get married.

She is best described as a petite brunette with a well proportioned body. She's smart but doesn't push herself as hard as she should. At the moment she's working in a drugstore and seems to enjoy it. Her parents died a year before we got married. Her two brothers were older and had moved to Alberta to cash in on the oil boom. They telephoned or use the internet to chat as frequently as they can but are both busy starting their own families.

I'm of average height with a good build. Being a firefighter requires a good deal of physical fitness. I work hard to make sure I survive if push comes to shove. A lot of firefighters die in the line of duty though there are few such incidents in Orillia. I'm fairly competitive but team sports has dropped in my interest. I play hockey but I can't really join a team with my odd schedule.

Our city has just over 30,000 people with another 10,000 in the surrounding area. We're on the west end of Lake Simcoe. A lot of the town's prosperity comes from tourism. It's a beautiful place to live and I wouldn't want to live any place else.

The two ladies continued to talk about me and soon expanded to include all males in general. They felt that there is a lot of improvements necessary but at least I was tentatively accepted.

We had a meal and I worked on a few of the jobs that Grandma couldn't do herself. It was like working for our meal but she was family and I loved her.

On the way home, Nicki sat close to me on the bench seat of the pickup. She leaned on me and just sighed.

"Are you tired, hon?"

"No, just happy to be here. Not every girl gets to have the man of her dreams."

She couldn't see my face so I smiled. This was a nice compliment. "Well, I think I'm the lucky one. I found a beautiful and caring woman to share my life with. Now if only I could keep up with you in bed!"

"Keep up! You old horn-dog. You're poking me all the time." She looked at me then produced a big smile. "You manage to make me feel good so I don't think I'll try to stop you, yet."

"Stop me! You were the one to abuse little me this morning."

"I only did that because I wanted to sleep later in the morning. You needed to get drained and I just did what the Americans call a 'pre-emptive strike'."

"You woke me up to do it."

"There was no sense waiting for you to attack and wake me up."

My arm moved to her chest and I found a nice breast to toy with. Nicki moved her hand to find something interesting in my pants as I got her nipple to respond to my fingertips.

Nicki groaned and pushed into my chest. In seconds she had my zipper down and she was fishing for a portion of my anatomy. I didn't pull over though we were now out of Orillia proper. I knew it wasn't a safe way to drive, but I couldn't help myself. I drove with one hand as I tried to get out of my pants. Nicki helped me and then I helped her take off her top, bra, and panties. It wasn't dark yet and this added spice to our lovemaking.

The seat was all the way back and Nicki was giving the old snake artificial respiration as I pinched her nipple. I somehow made it to the laneway leading to our rural home without erupting. I drove in only a few metres and had to stop. A pair of railroad sleepers formed the gate to our house. They were suspended across the driveway. I had no intention of getting out at this time to open the lock.

The truck shook for half an hour as cars and transport trucks went by just a few metres from our rear bumper.

Nicki was a tiger and I just held on for the ride. I lost some hair when I got her legs up. Later, her thighs kept me from being deafened. She was a very vocal and responsive woman.

We rested for a moment to share the feelings of love and I started to respond again as her nimble fingers started on me again. I hurried out of the truck and opened the gate. Nicki was in a hurry too because she drove through while I closed up. More than one person might have seen my naked form as I did this but thankfully it was starting to get a bit darker by now.

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Later that spring, Nicki said, "I'm going over to Mary's. It's her birthday."

I didn't have to go to work for a while so I asked, "Do you want company?"

"No, it's a girl thing."

"Then have a nice time and tell her happy birthday for me."

"I will, Herb."

When Nicki left, I opened my books on medicine and studied for a bit. I had hopes of getting a much better job even if I didn't want to be a doctor, at least not yet. A Physician's Assistant looked to be a good calling. The pay was not that much better than what I was currently making but there were a lot more hours. Helping people this way was very similar to a doctors duties but a PA didn't have all of a doctor's responsibilities. Perhaps the city and the fire department would compensate me better and I would stay where I was, just have more duties.

Nicki drove her small car down the regional road and stopped in front of a small house on Fittons Road. Mary Skoty was the friend having the birthday party. By the time Nicki walked to the porch both Mary and her friend Linda came out to greet her.

Mary said, "It's nice of you to come, Nicki."

"I'm happy to come over and see both of you."

"Come on in. There's some herbal tea ready."

Everybody had just sat down when Mary's baby started to cry. All three women went to check on the child when the doorbell rang. Mary asked, "Will you get that, Nicki? It's probably Jess."

"Jess?"

"Yes, she comes through once in a while and she said she was going to try to stop by today."

Jess was invited in and she gave a big hug to Nicki and said, "Hi, Nicki. I haven't seen you for a while. How's married life treating you?"

"It's fun so far. I guess we haven't got over that honeymoon feeling yet."

The girls watched the baby being dressed, then both Mary and Linda kissed Jess. Jess turned to get the kisses on her lips. Nicki could see a few stiff nipples and felt that her own had also hardened.

Linda brought out a cake and everybody sang Happy Birthday to Mary and kissed her. When it came to Nicki's turn she found Mary kissing her like a lover, not a friend. Nicki didn't feel as uncomfortable as she thought she might have.

Presents were given and Jess insisted hers be opened first. Mary was pleased by a sheer negligee. Nicki was shocked but after thinking about it she felt the gift to be acceptable.

Linda and Jess wanted Mary to model her present for them. After a lot of persuasion, Mary went to the bedroom and changed. When she came out, Nicki was relieved somehow to see that the woman also wore her bra and panties. Linda and Jess did a lot more persuading and got Mary to take off her bra, even assisting her with the task. Nicki was starting to get uncomfortable because of the sexual undercurrent.

A nice wine was enjoyed while Mary opened more presents. Linda had purchased a bra and panties for Mary but they were a different style from the negligee. There was no crotch in the panties and the bra had holes in so the nipples were exposed.

Linda said, "Next time you have a man over you can pop his eyes out with these." Mary was single and the father of the child would not be the one to be stimulated because he had fled when Mary's abdomen started to swell.

Jess said, "He'll drool at the sight of your nips. They're so beautiful." Nicki wondered how she knew this.

Mary opened the present that Nicki brought. It was a nice dress in just the right colour to match Mary's eyes. The other two wanted Mary to model it and she did. Nicki actually felt relieved now that she wasn't forced to stare at her friend's erect nipples.

The baby made its presence known again and Mary removed the dress to breast feed her baby girl. This wasn't an odd occurrence and the girls all got close to watch the child feed. Nicki thought that this might explain how Jess had seen Mary's nipples.

It was Jess that asked, "Does she still have that rash?"

The mother replied, "Yes, I put some Penaten on but it's not going away."

Jess smiled and said, "Did you try lots of Vaseline like I suggested?"

Mary turned bright red and said, "I'll wait to she gets cranky. It settles her down." Linda and Jess smiled and Nicki didn't know what this was all about.

When the baby had enough, everybody went back to the nursery to watch Mary take care of her child. A mother could do this much quicker without with three members in a peanut gallery, but everyone wanted to feel included.

When the baby seemed to be quieting, Linda brought in her gift and said, "Put these on, Mar. I want to see how they look."

Mary looked at Nicki but bowed to pressure. She was only wearing her panties anyway. Mary didn't go away or even turn. She stripped off her panties right in front of everybody. Everybody could see that the she was shaved and as bald as her baby.

Mary didn't have any problem putting her finger into her crease as if she were in the house alone. It was the bra that she put on first and Jess got in front to close it and from the way her arms moved, she must have been doing a lot more.

Mary groaned, put her hands on Jess' shoulders to balance herself and groaned again. When Jess backed up, Mary's nipples were very prominent. That wasn't all though. There was a strong smell of aroused woman and Mary looked at each of the three girls like a tiger would its next meal.

Linda helped Mary put on the panties but blocked the view so Nicki couldn't see. Mary groaned again and had to hold onto her friend to stay on her feet. Linda kissed her passionately and said, "Happy Birthday, sweetie."

"I want my other present later."

Jess got Mary to pose. Some were from a standing position. Others were on the bed with her legs up. All three girls could see into Mary and she wasn't shy in the least. Her eyes went from one woman to the other as if looking for one of them to bring her relief.

Linda said, "This isn't right. You have those nice things and we don't."

Mary breathlessly said, "I have more. You guys can try them on."

Linda and Jess dove into the chest of drawers to get garments then quickly stripped. When they were both naked, Jess said, "Come on, Nicki. We're all girls here. Haven't you ever played dress-up?"

"Not this kind of dress up."

"Give it a try. It's a blast."

Nicki just stood there and it was Mary that started to remove Nicki's clothes. The young wife just seemed to be too stunned to prevent it from happening.

It was only when Nicki stepped out of her panties that she realised that three hungry and naked women were staring at her. Her hands went over her mound but Mary moved in and said quietly, "Give me a birthday kiss, Nicki. A real one."

The two kissed and Nicki must have swooned because she found herself on the bed. Mary was still kissing her lips but somebody was sucking on her inflamed clit. This was something only a few boyfriends and her husband had done in the past.

An orgasm built up in Nicki's body until she screamed, raking Mary's body with her fingernails. Mary had not muffled enough of the noise and the baby awoke.

Nicki remembered when she was younger that she and Sophie had been lovers and it all came back now. She had been involved with a woman after all.

It was hours later that four very sated women parted with some very passionate embraces.

It was four months later that I came home and found Nicki crying and distraught. I held her in my arms but this didn't have the usual effect. She sat at the kitchen table instead. She cried into her arms as they rested on the table. I sat and wondered what had happened. With much effort and patience I learned what the problem was. I was stunned. Nicki wanted to leave me and go her own way.

It took a few moments before I could move. I finally managed to put my hand out and rest it on Nicki's shoulder. "You can't mean that Nicki. I love you now even more than I did when we got married."

Nicki sat up and my arm fell free from her shoulder. I couldn't help but note the symbolism.

She said, "I don't love you as much." There was a pause and she added, "I used to love you more than anything. I thought being a wife and mother was what I wanted. I see now that I'm going to be stuck in a dead-end job for the rest of my life. I see the way my friends are and their babies drive me crazy."

"We don't have to have kids for a few more years. We could adopt some kids if that's the only way."

"It's not that. The children would be like cement blocks tied to my neck. I could never advance. I'd be stuck here. Even this house is like a jail. It takes ten minutes to drive into town. Our nearest neighbours are old people that spend their time drinking. I want to be with my friends."

"We can move into town. We can even move to a larger town if you like. I love you, Nicki, and I don't want to lose you. You can go back to school, get a degree and get a better job. One you really enjoy. I can wait. You could go for a teacher's certificate."

Nicki wiped more of her tears away with the back of her hand and I quickly got up and put a box of tissues by her. Nicki gave me a small smile and cleaned herself up. She was three years younger than me, and like a child in some ways. She was small and slim and even prettier than she was when she moved to town seven years ago.

Nicki said, "That makes me feel even worse. I wanted to be a teacher so bad but put it off to be a wife. I thought that was so much better. School was hard for me and I was always studying when I wanted to go out. Mom and Dad made me. I don't want to go back to school. I want to stay as far away as I can from children. The young ones, especially."

"What do you want, Hon? I'll support you the best I can."

She gave another smile and said, "That's just it. I don't know what I want. I know I don't want to be a secretary or a waitress. I don't know what I want."

"There are still lots of jobs open to you. You could start a business. I could get another loan and we can open a shop in town. If you don't like that, we can try at Ferringtons. You dress nicely and know how to use cosmetics. You could sell those products. When you get a little experience you could open your own business."

Nicki's hand came out and I clutched it tightly in my larger hands. I hoped that I could use this to hold her to me. Nicki said, "That sounds nice. Maybe that will work."

Nicki seemed to recover and I was always very solicitous of her. I moved heaven and earth to get Nicki a job at the department store. Nicki was happy for a few months, but one day I came home and found a hand written letter addressed to me on the table.

Hello, Honey. I'm sorry but I can't take it any longer. I just have to leave. It's nothing that you did or didn't do. I don't know what it is. I don't know what I want, I don't know what to do, but I know that I can't find it here.

I talked to a lawyer and signed some papers. I want to leave free and I want you to be free, too. I took most of the money in the bank but left enough for the next mortgage payment. I took most of my clothes and you can do whatever you want with the rest. I won't be sending for them.

I'll always love you and maybe one day we'll run into each other again. I hope you don't hate me too much. I do love you but not enough to stay here.

She signed her name with a small heart for the dot over the letter 'i'.

I was devastated and all I could do was put my own head on the table and cry.

The next few weeks were more or less a blur. I searched all of Orillia and even went south to Barrie. I went as far north as Huntsville and checked Gravenhurst and Bracebridge on the way.

It was a month after Nicki left that Jeff, one of my best friends and my cousin, said, "Herb, I just heard that Nicki may have left with Jess." He was a cop that worked for the Ontario Provincial Police. He had helped me fill out the missing person's report.

I looked at him not understanding. He said, "Jess was here for three days just before Nicki disappeared. She hasn't been seen since that day."

I was desperate and asked, "Where does Jess live?"

"She came and stayed with some of her friends. From what I heard, she lives in or near Toronto."

"Thanks, Jeff. That's the best news I've heard in a long time."

I got the names of the friends and went to the two I knew fairly well. Only one of the four was married and all of them looked to be slobs. Their homes were a mess. One had a child and her boyfriend had skipped. I tried not to look around as I asked Mary about Jess and Nicki.

After a bit of thinking, Mary said, "I don't know how to say this so I'll just spit it out. Jess doesn't like men as much as she likes girls."

I looked at Mary. I always had a feeling when near Jess but I knew that she had dated guys when she lived in the city. If this were true — I suddenly followed the reasoning. I couldn't see Nicki trying to copy her friend's lifestyle. The two were friends in high school but not all that close.

Mary put out her hand and touched mine with only the tips of two fingers. She looked into my eyes with a pained expression and said, "If you find Nicki you might not be able to bring her back. I'm not saying that she's like Jess. Jess may just have supplied a ride someplace."

That night I gave Jeff the news and called the police to give them the information I found. Two weeks later Jeff came to the house and said, "Hi, Herb. I have some news but it isn't good."

"What is it, Jeff? Did you find Nicki? Is she hurt?"

"She's not hurt. The police found her and she doesn't want to come home."

The way he said it I had to ask, "What else did you find?"

"She wasn't with Jess but — she was with some other women. Jeff paused and finally said, "The report said that she looked to be a working girl and I don't mean the kind in a department store."

"She's hooking?" I was incredulous. Nicki wouldn't do that.

There was a rather long pause and Jeff said, "That's what the report says. The people she was with usually served female customers."

"Oh, god. What am I going to do?"

Jeff took a sip of his beer and said, "There's absolutely nothing you can do. She wants her freedom and gave you yours. My advice is to try to get over this and get on with life. I know that sounds hard and cruel, but it's the best thing you can do."

I couldn't really answer him. He stayed with me for another hour before leaving. I couldn't get any more information from him and I was sure he purposely didn't read those parts of the document that I would question him on.

I had been called by a lawyer's office but it was a year later that I actually went and signed the bottom of the documents.

My life was empty without Nicki. I was a fireman and paramedic. My work was my life and that was what kept me sane. After a while I was able to think about the future again and I considered taking two to three years off to push harder to be a Physician's Assistant. I realised that I was basically looking for something that I could immerse myself in so I could forget my problems. Every night I dreamed of Nicki and I couldn't move forward.

There were lots of my friends in the city and some were in the medical profession. Through their help I took courses that could get me closer to being a PA. I was on shift work and it was difficult to make some of the classes in Barrie, thirty five klicks to the south.

Any free time I had was used by my buds to get me to go hunting or fishing. This was the area for it. With the amount of studying I had to do these activities didn't happen very often. My impromptu hockey games dropped to nil because my mind wasn't on the game or I got more violent than I should.

I had always liked hunting and favoured the bow. This activity allowed me to be by myself and helped more than studying or moping around the house. I knew that anybody could get a deer from a blind or a tree stand. That was much too easy. I stalked my prey with bow and arrow and even tried a spear for a while but I wasn't as good as our ancestors.

Lots of girls came to see if I was available. I was not celibate, exactly, and it was Helen that got me seriously dating again. I liked her a lot but I doubted if I would marry her. She was a vivacious woman that could push all of my buttons. I could certainly push all of hers but I wasn't ready to commit myself at this time. Perhaps I never would be. I simply didn't feel the emotional connection strong enough to want her as a permanent part of my life.



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Chapter 2


"Bobby! You get down from there right now," I said.

"I was just playing Piper."

I had to soften my thoughts. Bobby was as close as a son to me, even though I was not quite fourteen and Bobby was seven. The boy looked around carefully and then descended slowly as if he had an invisible elevator around him. He settled to the ground with a sheepish smile and then looked in my mind to see how much trouble he was in. He gave me a beautiful smile and ran to me. I picked him and hugged him. Lifting him was hard because he was average size and I was small.

When I put him down I said, "You think you're so smart sometimes, but people could see you with binoculars."



"I looked. There isn't anybody around for kilometres except those on the other side of the hill."

"There could be hunters and they have binoculars. You can climb if you want but don't float up or down."

"I'll try to remember, Piper, but its boring here, especially when the weather's hot."

"I know, honey. Let's check on Megan and then we can go on a hike if you want."



We walked into the house. Our home was old hat to us now but it was beautiful. We had been living here since last September, just after I turned 13.

My sister Kimberly and I had run away from home. My dad was not fit to be a parent and did his disciplining with his fists and feet. He caught Kim and I making love to each other and this put him far over the edge.

We ran away to Toronto and managed to stay out of the clutches of the worst sort of people until we learned enough about the streets. The school said I had an IQ of around 130. Kim was a little over normal and though she was two years older than me she usually did what I said. Part of it was because she was meek. I was usually right in my decisions and more dominate. We fit together well and we were moderately happy.

We ran into small troubles at times but usually escaped. A young woman found us and took us to see a rich woman. We were given all sorts of tests. Some were medical and some were to see what we knew. I was bright enough as well as being aggressive enough to get a scholarship to a very small and quite private school the woman ran from her estate north of Toronto.

Sheila Knox was a confirmed lesbian and lusted after both of us. She was one of the world's most intelligent people. She gained her degree in organic chemistry in record time then began to turn her life toward gaining fame and fortune.

Unfortunately, she was a sociopath and had no conscience. This meant that she could easily do what might stop others. She had a job as a researcher with a major drug company. In her spare time she made illegal drugs for the underworld wholesalers.

With the first year's profits she bought an estate with walls around it and a large beautiful mansion. She ripped down the original garage, actually carriage house, that was beside it and built a large new one that could house a lab on a second story.

With the money from the lab she built a second house that would accommodate her private security force. Lab assistants were hired but she always sought out women that she would want to have sex with.

Over the years she went back to school to gather more degrees but the lab always worked full time. Along with this sort of success she found important pharmaceuticals that brought her and the major drug companies she worked for a lot of money. By then a few million wasn't much more than pocket change.

The school came into being because Knox wanted young beautiful flesh and intelligent women that could run some of the many businesses she owned. She also had to launder her money from the illegal drugs and the businesses provided a good method.

Twenty two years after she started her career we were brought to her school. I concentrated on studying while Kim did much less studying and spent much more time researching sex. Knox used her strap on cock to take Kim's hymen and then her butt. Kim didn't object in the least. As I said, she was meek and loved to have a cum.

Sheila had worked up the corporate ladder long ago. She was in charge of three separate drug experiments. One was casually called Abicore-L. It was intended to help people concentrate more and possibly increase their ability to reason. It also had a nasty side effect. In some cases the drug produced lesions in the brain and in some instances these lesions turned to cancers. Ninety percent of the people had to be killed, died from the drug or were unaffected.

One of the test subjects' name was Sam Appleton. Sam suffered from Down's Syndrome. His IQ was near 60. One day he picked up some 'candy' that his cousin had carelessly left out. The candy was bitter and Sam spit it out, but enough entered his blood stream. The candy was an amphetamine. It assisted the Abicore-L to get past some natural barriers and into his brain.

Sam had excruciating headaches and Sheila wanted to know the cause. She was not concerned with the subject, just what might happen to her trials. Sam's brain had changed minutely and some sections became active. The end result was that he slowly learned to read minds.

Sheila discovered this and understood the ramifications very quickly. She had Sam hustled off to the all girl school so she could investigate him and at the same time limit his exposure to anyone else. Sam learned to read minds better. As his brain developed so did the lesions. He was dying from a combination of the drug effects and his Down's Syndrom. The Abicore-L had succeeded in increasing Sam's intelligence but at a terrible cost.

I was put in charge of finding out all I could about mind reading effect. Sheila didn't like to go near Sam because he would sense how much she hated all males. I fudged the tests so it would appear that Sam was less powerful than he really was. This was like what Scotty did in Star Trek when he talked about his engines.

During a trip home Sam was overcome with all the thoughts of the crowds of people encroaching on his mind. Knox had to find a drug to deaden his mind so he could function when he was around more than just a few people. Sam learned to cast his thoughts to others.

Sam liked the girls' bodies at the school and developed a way to see through the cloth. It was not exactly seeing but it worked out to the same thing. He worked on it until he could see through a wall if he was encouraged to do so.

I was the one to encourage him. First I played with his cock, then I sorta sucked it. I liked guys and girls. Some of the extra drug in his body entered mine through his semen.

Knox started to experiment on others. Most died or went insane. Those that went insane were killed and their bodies disposed of in a makeshift crematorium. One young woman by the name of Tiffany survived. She was put into my care. She met Sam and they fell in love. I got to share body fluids and gained more of the drug. Eventually, I recognised what was happening. My abilities were much weaker than Sam or Tiffany's, probably due to the amount and possibly the delivery method.

Soon Tiffany found herself pregnant. Sheila was not idle during this time. We experimented on dogs so fewer humans would die. From this I got Sparky, Sniffer, Dancer, and Turbo. Sniffer was a control dog and was otherwise normal. Sheila contracted with organised crime. She bought many runaways or just children of addicts. Most died or were killed but Bobby, Joy, Missy, Dina, and Tatum survived. Soon after I got Amanda and Jess. Amanda went crazy and was killed. I then got Brandon, William, Nicholas, and Anthony.

Since I conducted most of the tests, I downgraded the results just as I had with Sam. Sam finally went to the hospital for the last time. A former co-worker and now rabid enemy of Sheila, Gordon Colins III, tried to kidnap Sam and Tiffany to find some answers. Sam blasted their minds as they were wheeling him out of the hospital but his own mind was destroyed by the overload.

I wanted to bring Sheila down without dying myself. We sent Colins some information that sent him after Sheila. Sheila was already paranoid but went to extremes after she was attacked twice. Fearing somebody would find her secrets she put them onto DVDs in heavily encrypted format. The original documents were destroyed.

Sheila had amassed a legal and an illegal fortune in her years of drug research. She had to hide a lot of the money gained from the illegal drugs she made because there was no way she could launder all of it. She had nearly a billion dollars sitting in numbered accounts. She did not make small batches but worked with tonnes of drugs.

I wanted to get away from Sheila and hurt her in the process. I diverted as much of her money as I could into my accounts and even put her into debt. Then I sicced the tax man on her by sending some of her financial records to the revenue office anonymously. She would have less money to chase us and very little time as well.

During a battle between Colins' mercenaries and Sheila's security forces we managed to make our escape. We moved around a bit before we found a beautiful home in the north.

Tiffany had her baby, a daughter she named Megan. We all worked at developing our minds. With this effort we gained in the ability to listen to others as well as pushing our thoughts into other people's minds. Intelligence is an odd thing to measure but we gained a better memory and a way of focussing on what was important. Along with a few other minor improvements our IQ shot up fifty to sixty percent. Since I was the most dominant and the smartest I was the de facto leader of the pack. The pack knew that I loved them and this helped hold us together.

Some of us found other abilities. Sam had been able to perceive what was on the others side of a wall. Seven year-old Bobby could float in the air. Joy could hold something and tell you who had come in contact with it since it was formed. Anthony could see things as clearly at a distance as if he were up close. If the view was blocked he couldn't see as far.

Missy could find missing articles. Dina and Tatum had not developed anything serious yet though they had small talents in many things. Tiffany could heal her child or at least that's what it looked like. We all tried to learn this from her.

Brandon was strong and he could pick up or move heavy articles. We figured this was similar to what Bobby did when he lifted himself into the air. William hadn't found his niche yet. Nicholas had an affinity for numbers and we learned to not gamble with him, even when he couldn't read our minds.

Jess didn't do much. She loved the pack and they loved her but she never pushed herself. I pushed myself but all I could do was move fast. Something like Flash in the comic books but I was only up to three times faster and only when I pushed myself hard. In the end I had to recover as if I had run a marathon.

The dogs were a major portion of the pack. Jack Russel Terriers were bright for dogs but ours were brighter than almost any dog before. Sniffer was the exception because she had not been given the drug. She was different another way too. The drug we all took affected our libido. For humans this wasn't noticed because this is the way we were, especially since we were young and already horny.

Dogs, however, went into heat usually two times a year. Sparky, Dancer, and Turbo could read our minds. When the humans engaged in sex this flooded their minds with eroticism. The drug the dogs took reinforced this and they screwed just as often as we did. This had happened even when they were pups so they had to get implanted with contraceptives. Sniffer was not horny like the rest and didn't take to being mounted. The other dogs were extra kind to her the way we would be to a normal person that would come into our pack. This indicated that Abicore could be making us horny too. It could also be that reading minds showed everybody that the rest wanted to have sexual gratification. This lead to gaining that fulfilment.

Megan was our only child and she was brighter than a normal. She could already read minds but not very well. I couldn't find out if the drug her mother and father took did this when she was conceived, when she was in utero, or after birth from her mother's milk. I wasn't going to try this kind of experiment to find out. When Tiffany weaned her we could remove one possibility.

When we left the school, we took the chemicals and some of the necessary equipment. Over the last year we used up most of the finished drug we took when we left and we began to make our own. Nobody wanted to be without. Our intelligence was changed permanently. Our ESP abilities were temporary in nature. Our experiments showed that we could cut back but then our bodies built up a tolerance for the drug and we had to increase the dosage slightly. We could go four days and our abilities were at 75%. At eight days it was down to 5%. We were happy with less power most of the time anyway.

We produced Abicore-Q which was the latest version of the original Abicore-L. It was less lethal and those that took it were less prone to developing brain lesions. It was still too deadly for me to take it directly.

We didn't interact with other children very much. They were too dull for us. So were their parents. We learned from the net and we each had to learn one specialty so we could teach it to the rest of our group. We were also in hiding. People could report some young people not attending school and Knox could find us by the records. Home schooling meant people visiting a few times a year. A house of thirteen human and three canine geniuses would arouse some comment.

We tried to expand our intellects as well. This way each of us could teach the remaining twelve about some subject. Nicolas got Math and it didn't seem fair. He instinctively picked the best choice and we couldn't match what he could do.

Bobby had an IQ similar to the rest. His was near a hundred and sixty. English was his forte. He couldn't use his ESP to assist him like Nicolas could. He spent his time writing pornographic stories. I don't mean erotic. They were literary pieces of pornography. He sent them off to be enjoyed by the rest of humanity by placing them on storiesonline.net. Everybody there thought he was just a dirty old man.

When we took English with him we had to send in our stories too. Joy and Misty were just as bad as Bobby in some ways. They did research on the subject and they claimed to be making an updated version of the Kama Sutra with added positions. Unretouched photos would be used to prove that all the positions could be done. They were also doing a girl only version for what it was worth.

All the older girls were on the pill but the hormones interfered with the drug I received through the secretions of the pack. Kim had taken a stupid chance and took the raw drug and managed to survive. Kim and I had been the weakest but because we worked up slowly we got to be the strongest, even before she took the drug. Kim's double dose made her much stronger than me.

Sex was one facet of our lives that we really enjoyed. It was just not the feelings from our erogenous areas but the feeling of love, commitment and belonging we shared.

Most of the boys had been male prostitutes before coming to us. They loved each other as well as us girls. The girls didn't mind other girls, especially since the boys just couldn't last as long as the girls wanted them to. The boys would turn into Energiser Bunnies when a vibrator was used on them but they still burnt out. The three youngest of our group were sex fiends. Bobby would jump on any hole he found except my front one, I wouldn't allow that. But being a mother figure made me put up with a lot. The majority of the dogs were just as bad but the species never interacted.

-------

Our lives were idyllic in a way. We had anything money could buy but we wanted very little. Our home was built on thirty seven hectares so we had privacy and freedom just forty kilometres from Owen Sound. This town was just off of Georgian Bay. This body of water was part of Lake Huron. The house was defensible and we put up sensors and planned escape routes to other safe houses we owned.

The community left us alone. It was Tiffany, Jess, Tatum, Dina, Brandon, William, and Kimberly that did the interfacing for us. They looked old enough to have quit school even if that wouldn't be a smart thing to do.

A school in the US sold us some diplomas. We could then provide documentation that we had completed the minimum amount of schooling required. We had to use consistent names because this helped support other documents. Gaining a valid driver's licence was difficult and costly because the identification behind it had to be genuine enough for us when we got older.

On trips to the city we formed different groups of different sizes and ages so we weren't seen as a unit. Plays, music recitals, festivals, and other human gatherings were attended. Most of it was to be with others but not for too long. Humanity had to be taken in small doses.

Bobby had dark skin and stood out as did Joy who was Vietnamese. When we stayed together, it looked like an odd grouping, as if a woman had many different ethnic fathers for her children.



-------

Chapter 3


One morning, Kim said, "Piper, we're getting low on Abicore. We need to find a chemical supplier."

Kim sounded grouchy but she got that way when her period was due. I replied, "I already lined a few up but haven't gone further."



"I'm not grouchy."

"Kim, I love you, but you are a bit grouchy at this time of the month. You can't help it any more than I can help being a bit pushy. At least you get over it while I'm that way all the time."

"You're not pushy. You know what to do and people need a leader."

"I feel more like a mother some days."



From another part of the house we heard Joy say, "Mommy, my cunny's sore."

Outside came the thoughts from Bobby, "I'll come in and look at it for you, sweetie."

"Mommy uses her tongue and you use your dick. That's why I'm sore."

There was no hiding from a group of telepaths unless I hid my thoughts but this was not considered a nice thing to do. Everybody knew everything that was going on. I kept a partition buried deep where I hid some of the thoughts that made me what I am.

"I was talking to Kim, guys. I'll look after you tonight if you have your chores and your studies done. A test is coming up and you better pass."

Both children, with all the rest, said sarcastically in unison, "Yes, Mommy." Many of them were older than me. They were not being cruel because I felt their love for me and their affirmation that I was the one to lead the pack.

I fired my computer up and connected to the satellite. With the money we had, the cost of the linkage was almost nothing. Dial up was the only substitute and it wasn't much of one.

The chemicals we currently needed didn't require permits. Diethyl ether did but we had enough for another batch. At some time in the future we would have to find a source or prepare our own. It was easy to make and organic chemistry was such an interesting subject to learn.

My memory was near photographic since the drug changed me. I recalled the companies, their URL's, and their addresses. One business in North Bay was too close. There was news in the paper that Knox had survived her wounds. Evil people seemed to live forever. If she caught wind of the purchase she would be on our trail.

I chose a company in Brampton, just northwest of Toronto. What I wanted was available there or some other sources near Toronto. I could make a phone call but not from here. It frightened me to enjoy organic chemistry, be really intelligent, and also be paranoid. This reminded me too much of what Knox was like.

This was not that big of a trip but we didn't get out that much. I was always fearful of the pack being found. It was a lot of work but the alternatives meant we would be dead. My fears did not carry strongly to the pack but they were not carefree either.

We would only be gone a full day but I wanted to swing by Knox' home and find out what she was doing. I caused her a world of grief but she would use that emotion to hunt for us when she wasn't working on killing people to find answers about the drug. This may take an extra day or two. Tiffany would go home right away with the truck and supplies because she still breast fed.

Our van was prepared as an escape vehicle. It had three pistols, ammunition, four grenades, a good medical kit, bug detector, phony papers, and lots of cash. Knox had a similar cargo in the automobiles she usually drove, or she did after she was attacked. The windows were all heavily tinted so people couldn't look in. Our hair colour had changed and we wore sunglasses most of the time. Kim could wear any glasses she wanted and now she had good hearing aids. She was almost deaf without them.

Jess came to drive the van. It was Kim's turn to go with me. Tiffany came to drive the rental truck home.

I said to Tatum, "I know you don't like me to treat you like a child but I worry."

"I know. Keep vigilant, know where everybody is all the time and look for ways to escape no matter where I am."

"Thanks, Tatum. I knew I could depend on you."

"There's nothing to do. The pack knows what to do and they do it. I'm a figurehead."

I held Tatum and kissed her with both passion and care. I loved her and the rest. I then went through the entire group. I even hugged Sniffer and Dancer because I was taking Turbo and Sparky with us. They liked to travel and they didn't get much of a chance. We were still saying goodbye when we were two kilometres away. Our range had improved considerably.

As the trip progressed, I relaxed more but I was always scanning the minds of those that passed in other cars. I had the drug strattera though we tried to use it as little as possible. I hoped to build up to a point that we would not need the drug to keep the minds of all those around us out of our heads. We still avoided large concentrations of people when we could. In some cases we felt pain as if too many people were clamouring to get into our heads at one time.

We stopped every few hours to stretch and allow the dogs to water the daisies. They could hold it a long time and told us when they needed to go. I just didn't like being confined in a car for too long.

Near Toronto we pulled over and Tiffany fed a public telephone some coins. We called six places even though the first had what we wanted. Paranoia was a good thing to have if you wanted to stay alive.

Our next stop was a truck rental business where we rented a cargo van with one of our sets of phony papers. With it we got a lot of blankets and nylon straps to hold the cargo.

It was still nearly an hour to the business in Brampton. Jess drove to the area first and we scanned the area for somebody excited about a hunt. Tiffany drove in after we finished the search.

I went in with Tiffany. The counterman only admired both of our bodies and Tiffany preened for him.



"I did not."

"You did too. You wiggle your bum for me too."

"You know a good bum when you see it."

"I certainly do. Now get to work."

"Yes, fearless leader."

"You call me that and I'll start making quotes from Rocky and Bullwinkle again."

"I learned my lesson."



The counterman stood straight and preened himself. "What can I do for you ladies?"

Tiffany smiled seductively and gave her list verbally as she handed over a listing on paper of the articles. There were different purities of product and we tried to get the best. She claimed to work for a new plastics company in need of some odd raw materials to do some research.

The counterman filled the list but didn't work very fast. He liked Tiffany and I got a few glances myself. This didn't hurt my ego but I didn't prettify myself the way Tiffany did.

"I did not."

"That was only a thought to think about, not send."

"You're forgiven but I think you turned to show him your profile. He likes you. If you climbed on the counter, I bet he'd be kissing your lower lips in seconds."

"You're just a pig." I waited a while and said, "But a pretty pig."

Two men helped load the rental truck and we drove out of the gate.

We got on the 401 because we didn't want to use the electronic tollway. This would leave tracks. Knox lived in the east near Unionville. Tiffany was going to head north on the 400 and home but we stopped at a busy restaurant first. We found a parking space right away but it took a while for Tiffany to find one for the truck. The dogs had their kibble but we would still bring a treat to them.

Just after our meal was delivered, we heard Sparky growl mentally. There was a threat to the pack. We hurried out to see what was happening. We could sense Sparky and Turbo and they were mentally pointing to a far corner of the lot.

There were two people in that corner and when we went purposely toward them they got in a car and left.

The waitress came out thinking we had skipped and Tiffany said, "Somebody was fiddling with our car."

"Did they break in?"

"We have a radio operated alarm. They didn't get into the car, they were just trying. We better get our meal packaged. I don't feel comfortable here."

The waitress said, "I'm sorry to hear that. We don't usually have problems like this."

The meal was put in Styrofoam boxes and we got some plastic cutlery to go with it. While Tiffany paid, I said to Jess, "Those two people were not thinking of Knox but they were certainly looking for us. I don't know if they saw our van or not but I think we have a bug someplace."

We used the bug detector and found it attached to the bottom of a plastic container that had a heavy ridge around it. We searched the rest and even checked the van in case they planted another beacon but the detector found nothing more.

Kim was the most nervous but the rest of us weren't far behind. She said, "What are we going to do?"

"Find a public phone and call home. They're probably safe. We have to get the reagents home and ditch the two vehicles. Those guys are still around but can't see us. They're waiting for us to leave."

We used the phone in the restaurant. Tatum was upset but seemed to be handling the stress fairly well. We had fire drills all the time but they were intended for intruders. This would be just one of the scenarios and they would be on the lookout.

One more call was 911. "Hi, My name is Mary Snyder. I'm in Keelson's Restaurant near the airport. I saw two men. One of them has a big black gun with something like a pipe on the end. I saw it when the wind blew his jacket open."

"Where are they now?"

"They stopped and talked near a Ford Taurus licence plate LMN 438. They seem to be looking around as if they're hunting for somebody."

From a few metres away, Tiffany said loudly, "Come on, Mary. We're not staying here any longer."

The police wanted more info. "I have to go. My sister doesn't want to be around if there's shooting."

I hung up and I got some weak smiles from the girls. We waited long enough for the police to arrive and we left. They even gave chase to the car. We headed north to Woodbridge and rented another truck from a competitor of the one we got ours from. The cargo was transferred and we drove back to where we rented the original truck and turned it in.

Tiffany said, "I trust you, Piper, but this makes me nervous. Not so much for me but for you guys."



"We'll do just fine. Tiffany drives up the 400 with us a few kilometres behind. If something looks suspicious we head east instead of west. We can't have the pack found. Maybe it's time to move again, anyway."

"I guess so but I love our house and property."

"We can find another just as good."

"Yeah, I guess."



We travelled up the 400 highway and kept in touch with our cell phones. I needed Jess to drive but Kim stayed with me instead of going with Tiffany. She was just too worried and held onto my hand as if I were the big sister. This thought had to be hidden deep with a lot of other thoughts or it would hurt her feelings.

When we got to a small community south of Newmarket, we stopped early for the night. If we were followed I wanted to know before I got home. We got a suite at a hotel and studied how to defend our temporary home and how to flee if the need arose.

The dogs were walked every hour. This was not for their benefit but to have an excuse to make our rounds. At least one of us was awake and ready to hurry to assist the one on patrol.

At three twenty, Kim woke me. "Somebody's looking for us."

This woke me up with a jolt of adrenaline. Instead of waiting for her to give me the info I dug it out myself. They had gone near the minivan first so there must be something there we missed or they were searching at every spot we could possibly stay at. The latter was too improbable.

There was no block on the men so Kim and I searched through those that were near us until I found another man. The rest of the girls were awake now and ready to fight or take flight.

Jess said, "I found the other."

Tiffany looked at me and I said, "We go. Maybe we can slow them down." The girls read my idea and smiled gamely this time. Even the dogs seemed to like the idea.

We gathered our property and left quietly. We took the service elevator. There was some night staff but nobody bothered us. Kim had us stop in one area as she concentrated. Through her link we found some of the parts to the puzzle. It was not Knox but Carstairs that was after us. He was the one that was hired by Colins to kidnap Knox and failed. He managed to capture Tiffany, Tatum, and Brandon. We killed a man in the process of rescuing them. Knox had killed a few more because she was going to kill off the pack starting with the three that were captured.

Carstairs didn't know of our abilities. He was wondering, though, how we always out thought him and he was a professional. Knox was still actively searching for us and the two forces had a sort of truce since the fight at the farm. We came to their attention when we purchased more than one of the chemicals needed to make Abicore. I could only surmise that somebody had placed the tracker and fled before I could detect his thoughts. This inferred that they knew we could read minds but it could be a coincidence.

The cargo van had another tracker on it. It was one that transmitted intermittently so it would be difficult to find.

The bill for our room had been paid in cash and ahead of time. A phony credit card was used to confirm our fake identities. We could not be traced back by that route. We learned one more fact. Another car with four people in it was due to arrive right away. We saw that they were going to follow us but one man thought it was possible to rush the room and capture the four of us.

I considered leaving the cars and calling a cab from someplace down the road but I didn't want to risk walking at this time of the night.

It was twenty minutes later that the other man's cell phone rang. He gave directions and in five minutes the car pulled in with four men in it. The two original men kept their posts and the four joined them for a conference.

Jess and I hurried across the parking lot and used our knives in the sidewalls of the back tires of both cars. We hurried to our vehicles. Tiffany had the new tracker in her hand and Kim had the one that was on our minivan.

Kim said, "What do we do with them?"

It took only a second to think, "We take them with us. Tiff goes home with the truck. Its night and she can get pretty far before someone could go on visuals only. We take the two trackers and go east. At a truck stop I'll put one on a transport truck. We'll go further east and do it again. I guess we'll sell the van and buy another to get home."

We got out of the parking lot without anybody noticing. It took only a few minutes to get on the highway. With a lot of tears and recriminations, Tiffany continued on while we turned east. Kim would be an asset to her but she figured that she was in more danger and didn't want Kim. She tried to hide this but my sister and I were stronger than any others in the pack.

I felt like crying but I couldn't. I was the leader and had to shepherd my flock by example or we could fall apart. We drove for a few hours and at the first truck stop we pulled in. We walked among the trucks. The drivers were sleeping in their cabs. It was not hard to find someone that had to get up early and was going west. This truck got Tiffany's tracker.

We stayed on Highway 7, the Trans-Canada Highway. We stopped for a quick breakfast and a chance to walk the dogs. The highway lead to Ottawa but we stopped in Perth, where we dropped off the other tracker and called home. Tiffany had made it safely and we all felt relieved.

I considered ourselves safe and backtracked down the Trans-Canada to Madoc and headed north so we could go above Lake Simcoe and then head home.

The roads were paved but weren't highways because they went up and down a lot. We were tired when nightfall came. We had little sleep though Kim and I got some in the seats.

Orillia was about the best place to stop for the night. Jess was familiar with the area because she used to live here at one time. We phoned home later to find everybody safe. They were happy to hear from us. Even Sparky hammed it up by barking to his other two mates. Dancer barked back as if they could really communicate.

A new batch of Abicore-Q was made but we were not explicit on the phone for obvious reasons. Everybody had been involved in its manufacture so they knew what was happening with their own eyes.

We found a nice motel but none of us slept well. Even the dogs were twitchy. Early in the morning I took a gun and the dogs and went for a walk. The cool air had the smell of the lake on it but it didn't relax me.

The next day I decided that we could not go home just yet. This nagging worry was still with us all and it had to be resolved. We traded in the fairly new minivan for another new one but the feeling stayed with us.

We spent the time enjoying the sights of the city like tourists while looking for threats. Jess was our guide and pointed out the more interesting places as well as where she used to live. Later she listed names and showed us where her friends lived or used to live. She was happy to be here but as she reminisced the feelings changed. She had screwed up her previous life and now was confronted with her decisions.

Jess held herself together because we were here. She could not hide behind lies or the facade she had erected around how she saw her life.

She talked of her old friends. Some were not friends at all and I showed Jess this but even with telepathy it was hard for her to see it. When we passed one restaurant she had to pull over. The memories were just too strong. A friend by the name of Nicki Stewart had gone to Toronto with her. They had grown apart as Nicki learned the ropes. They had both been inducted into Knox' experiment on the promise of money. Jess had survived but Nicki had gone insane and been killed. Jess saw this as her fault or at least partially so.

I said to Jess, "Nicki had not found herself. I don't think she was happy with her life in Toronto any better than here in Orillia. You just came by at the time she needed help and a ride to a new place to live. I don't think she was a survivor in many ways. You said she took drugs. She found women and discarded them. She was looking for something illusive and I think that she would never have found it."

"I was still the one that took her to all the places she took drugs. I was stupid back then. If Knox hadn't found me and led me to you I would have been like some of those women you pity so much."

"You have a family now. We support you. It may not be what you were looking for but it's far better than what most of humanity has." Jess cried but we knew that she had seen at least some of the truth.

The day passed slowly. We drove and changed our speed, going slow and then fast, trying to lure anybody tracking us to tip their hand but nothing happened. We looked for bugs in the vehicle and in all of our property and found nothing. It was odd that the feelings affecting us were so nebulous in nature but the threat seemed so concrete.

We stopped at a shooting range owned by a local gun club. I managed to sweet-talk a member into allowing us to use some of the club weapons. A gun in my hand made me feel a lot better. Jess thought the same way though Kim was not as eager to learn. She could shoot fairly well as it was.

An old man with greying hair was the one we had wrapped around our fingers. He said, "You three ladies shoot very well. I've never seen you around here before."

He was also interested in certain portions of our anatomy but that was no reason to not be polite. He was also a cop nearing retirement. He was interested in us as most men were. "We're on vacation from our home in Toronto. Our Dad used to take us to the range a lot before he died. When I feel lonely, I shoot to remember him. My friends and my sister cater to me once in a while."

"I'm sorry to hear about your father. You do shoot well."

"Thanks. I just wanted to use a pistol. Mom sold Dad's after he left."

"I've a Glock I keep here. Would you like to try it?"

I had a big smile. "I certainly would. Is it chambered for APC rounds or nine millimetres?"

"I see you do know a little about the gun. Let me get it. I hope it's not too big for you."

The man came back with a dark plastic case. "My name is Greg Thompson."

"Hi, Greg. This is our friend Marty and my older sister June. My name's Danielle but I like Dannie better."

Greg shook our hands and said, "I'm glad to meet all of you. Do you all shoot the pistol?"

The girls answered in the affirmative and we went to the indoor range. I purchased our shells and checked the gun out by disassembling it the way I learned from Knox' security and the net. I tempered it with the way Greg thought it should be done. This included inspecting each and every round that I put into the clip.

Greg said, "I don't think I have much to teach you about handling a weapon."

"We learned from the best."

"Let's see how well you shoot."

I took the position and Greg moved the target out to where I asked. He was a bit incredulous and said, "That weapon has a lot of recoil."

"You're not going soft on me, are you?"

"No, fire away."

I used the two handed method where I kept the gun horizontal while holding my own wrist. Shooting was enjoyable for me and I felt at peace for the first time in days. I concentrated on the target since there was no wind to worry about. I had to find my centre as if this were karate. This helped me relax. My breathing and then my heartbeat were factored in.

I didn't really hear the first shot since I was in the groove but I continued to shoot. There was only the gun, the target and me. When my mind came back to the club I found three men staring at me.

Kim said, "You sped up and fired too fast. They think you have a weapon that's full auto."

Greg looked stunned so I just smiled to cover my gaff and said, "Let's see how well I did."

Instead of going to the button to recall the target he came to me. He wanted the gun. I checked it out and handed it to him safely. The other men came over and watched as Greg disassembled the glock.

Greg whispered, "There's no auto function here. Look and see for yourselves."

This was going to get me into trouble and I walked over. "Did I do something wrong?"

"How did you get this to go into auto?" he asked, full of disbelief that I could pull the trigger so fast.

I faked a little girl laugh and tried to look embarrassed. "My fingers are fast. I can type over 250 words a minute. 250 words is 250 times 5 for the characters and almost 250 spaces between them. That works out to 250 times 6 or 1,500 keystrokes in a minute. That should make you tread lightly around the person that types up the club newsletter." This was not quite true but we all could type very quickly.

Greg looked at me and said, "I type the club newsletter."

I knew the answer so I asked, "Do you hunt and peck?"

"I'm pretty fast."

"But not as fast as a touch-typist."

"Maybe not." He shook himself and said, "Let's check the target."

The target whizzed back and the three men went over it carefully. They were relieved for a while when they saw only one hole in the target. Then they noticed that the hole in the bull's eye was larger than one bullet would make.

Kim came over and pushed her way in. She looked at the target and said, "She's showing off again. Annie Oakley over there is good and she hasn't been shooting for a few weeks."

One of the men said, "I never heard of her."

"She doesn't compete. She's like the bullshit about Crockett. She didn't go after a bear but she went to a range. It was disgusting. She hit the target and shit her diapers."

I called out, "You're still jealous that I could hit both targets at once."

Kim whispered loud enough for me to hear, "Her diapers stank too."

I called out, "When you're old and feeble, I'll change your diapers and I won't bitch about it."

Kim had a chance to shoot next. She was not as fast but she was good. Jess was faster and just as accurate. We ended up going through a lot of shells and a lot of people came our way.

They all commented on how I was so small and able to handle a 45. I talked about karate and finding your centre. Then I went into what was said on the net, and what Knox' thought. Even if she was a monster, she was an excellent shot. They seemed to understand after that.

We went back out to check on the dogs but they were in no trouble. The windows were wide open and they had food and water. The first time Turbo got me to go to the grass and clean up after her I complimented her and she took it to heart. Our dogs were the best.

I went in with the dogs to do more shooting. The dogs even wore muffs though they didn't fit too well. This way, people could marvel at the dogs' intelligence while we shot more.

Later, we shot with rifles and some men brought out their babies for us to try. We were good with these but I didn't try shooting fast again.

While one of us shot, the other two were looking for threats. If somebody came for us now, we would at least have weapons in our hands. The threat, if that's what it was, never got stronger but it never got weaker either.

We stayed one more night. This time we were invited to Greg's home to meet his wife and youngest son that was visiting from university. As luck would have it Josh was in his final year of chemistry.

When Josh learned that I liked the subject he started talking to give an indication about how much he knew. It was childish of me but I had to set him straight on a few points. This made him work harder and I was still able to catch him on another point.

Josh said, "How do you know so much about enzyme structure and interactions?"

"Oh, that. It's only light reading. I prefer finance."

Greg said, "Finance? You look only twelve or thirteen."

"I'm almost fourteen. I'm just small for my age. We live in a sort of commune. Everybody has a specialty. Each person teaches what they know and learns from the rest. One boy of seven writes stories. People think he's an adult. Another has a knack for math. When he gets in full stride the world will think of him like they do Stephen Hawking. A girl of eight will make a world famous archeologist one day."

"How old is this mathematician?"

"He's a few weeks older than me."

"What's his name?"

"Nicolas. We don't like using last names because it brings unwanted notoriety."

"And what do your two friends do?"

"Marty has not specialised yet. I think she'll make a great paediatrician." Marty/Jess was a bit shocked but hid it well.

"June I think will be a doctor too. I think she'll become a psychiatrist. I figure that her name will be up there with Freud and Jung."

Greg smiled because he had a trick. He turned to Kim and said, "Freud was preoccupied with sexuality as the determinant of personality. He preferred to emphasize a mystical or religious factor in the unconscious. What is your opinion of this?"

Without batting an eye, I said, "Sex drives many people. Jung started the concept of introverted and extroverted personalities. He postulated the four psychological functions of sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. My own research sides more with Freud. People are always thinking about sex and gratification. My hope is that, in the centuries to come, humans would be encouraged through heightened intelligence to see more of the aspects that Jung put forward."

"You think this will happen in just centuries?"

"Man will tinker with his own mind and body. No matter what moral stand you take, it will happen. There are many areas of the brain that will be stimulated to shrink the synaptic distance. Memory is a function that can be not only increased but piped much like a microprocessor to allow quicker responses."

"Here I was thinking that I had caught Dannie in a fib and I now have egg on my face. You seem to know a lot about the human mind. Do you think you will have as much impact on mankind as Jung and Freud?"

"I have no idea. I haven't settled on what to pursue yet. There are so many interesting choices."

Greg looked at Jess and said, "Do you think you're going to make a paediatrician?"

"That's just Dannie's deduction. I think my efforts should be focussed elsewhere. At the moment I don't know what that may be. Helping humanity as a physician or a medical researcher seem to hold my interests more than most."

Greg asked, "What about children of your own?" He was thinking of Josh and the way his son was looking at Jess.

Jess smiled a little sorrowfully to the man and said, "They don't appeal to me just yet."

Greg's police instincts had never stopped working. Only his close friends were immune to his searching for answers to unasked questions. He had seen Jess before, or somebody with a very similar face. Jess recognised that he would soon place her face with her real name.

I said, "I hate to just eat and run but we would like to get an early start tomorrow."

"That's too bad. Where are you going?"

"Are your police instincts emerging?" I said this with a smile.

"I'm sorry, it's a habit. How do you know I'm a cop?"

"The photo behind me shows you in uniform. You carry a beeper. You're big though that isn't conclusive. You look around and stare at people and events. You catalogue the activity and save it. Police are encouraged to use the tools of their trade and one tool is their weapon."

"I guess the photo is a giveaway. You'd make a good cop. You're very observant."

"I'd suffer the way you do. People would keep their distance and I'd have few friends. People tend to worry if they're going to get caught at something because we all have a few things to hide."

"You seem to know about police."

"No, I know about human nature. We're our own worse enemy."

We said our goodbyes and thanked Greg's wife for the nice meal. Jess kissed Josh which was unexpected by all of us including the young man. When we got in the car I asked, "What brought that on?"

"Greg was thinking I may be lesbian. That will steer him away from what I used to be like as well as give something for Josh to dream about tonight as he plays with his dick."

The feeling was still around. We talked about this and decided to really leave tomorrow. It may be something just associated with this area and not necessarily directed toward us. Going home was not an option just yet. If the feeling followed us we would know it.

We slept in the hotel with one of us awake and carrying a gun. Nobody would catch us napping. During my watch I thought about the matter and suddenly had a good idea what this was. I closed my mind completely. This could be another telepath. The only ones I knew of were those made by Knox. We could tell if somebody was entering our minds and this was why they hadn't done so. They could keep watch though.

I pushed my mind out to the limits looking for a telepath's shield. I looked for the one Knox used but found nothing like that. It stood to reason that Knox would find a way to produce more of us but this time keep very good control. This control could be used to force the people into a mould of her choosing. This mould could compel them to erect better shields.

We had a head start but we hadn't been pushed that hard to develop. Knox would make sure this didn't happen to her people. The intellects formed her way would be warped even more by her greed for power.

When the others awoke I told them of my theory. Both agreed with me and we were all worried. After a quick shower we inspected the car with the bug detector and with a mirror. I wished I had Sam's ability to look through the metal body to detect what was on the other side.

Jess brought us a breakfast and we left downtown and headed west. We almost immediately ran into a long line of cars that reminded me of Toronto rush hour. The feeling we had was still with us even though we had our barriers up as tight as they could go.

Ahead of us and coming closer was an ambulance. The siren made a lot of noise. Something was odd though. I felt drawn to the ambulance for some odd reason. There was something there that I needed but I had no idea what it was. I thought it might be an emerging talent of mine but that didn't seem right. When it got nearer the craving got stronger and stronger. I could even smell something and I concentrated on the what this might be. After it reached its peak I felt a loss as if something was slipping away. I wanted to go after it.

Traffic started to move and we went ahead. I looked at Kim. I wanted to tell her what I felt but she was looking behind her just as I had done. Jess didn't seem to be affected.



"Kim, did you just feel something weird about that ambulance?"

"What was it?"

"It had to be a person."

"I wanted to go after that feeling."

"Me, too. Jess didn't seem to be affected."



We brought Jess into the discussion. She said, "I didn't feel anything. The two of you were closed off."

Kim and I sorted and stored our feelings of the last few minutes then shared them with each other and Jess. We tried to think about what had happened when we came upon an accident. The police were waving us through. I had enough time to learn that a woman had been hit by a guy in a pickup truck.



-------

Chapter 4


We crossed the bridge over the channel connecting Lake Couchiching with Lake Simcoe and headed north before we headed east. Our thoughts were kept to ourselves while we thought of our escape but my mind kept going back to the ambulance.

When we turned west onto regional road 45 we felt a sudden increase in the feeling that had been with us for the last few days. I searched for the source and now for the first time I found two sources. They were close. It was as if they had to abandon their stealth to locate and overtake us.

The feeling slowly lessened but it was probably more the speed that Jess was driving. Trees rushed by and the roads were seldom straight for long. An hour later, we knew that we were still being followed somehow.

We would never get home if we didn't do something. Jess was all for taking the people on and settling this now. I tended to agree. We came on a turn through a swamp filled with dead trees then the road immediately climbed through a rock cut. A small road with a chain across it headed off.

"Jess! Stop here. This is it."

I hid my thoughts and said, "Back up."

"You want to do it here?"

"Yes."

Jess stopped the car and reversed. We hadn't seen too many cars on the road but some passed us every few minutes. I had time to find a jacket even though it was hot. I took my pistol and more than my share of the ammunition. There were only four grenades and I took them all.

We all wanted to communicate by thought but had to use our voice instead. I said, "Make a loop and come back this way in an hour or two. I'll head east on foot. I won't be on the road if I can help it."

It would be good to have the two dogs with me even if they would leave tracks. I bailed out of the van with the dogs. I felt the human emotions even through their closed shields. Kim gave me a wave as if to say she would never see me again but I would be back.

The chain was no barrier to somebody on foot and I just stepped over it. I ran up far enough to be level with the top of the rock cut. The dogs stayed on the stone. If there was an investigation, people would remember that there were two terriers with us. I left the roadway mindful of my own tracks. I had only setup one previous ambush and that had ended with one dead man. It was either him or us and that is the way I felt now. The dogs were still on the road but wanted to be with me.

A small car came racing after our van but I felt nothing from the vehicle and let it pass. One more vehicle came by from the other direction.

I pulled my shield as tight as possible and only opened it a fraction when I heard a motor. The feeling we had in Orillia got stronger. I had a chance to see a small red sports car approach the curve as I sighted on the driver's side front tire. My finger worked furiously. I heard the noise of brakes and the car left the road and went through the barrier and into the swamp.

My suspicions were confirmed because whoever was in the car dropped their shield completely as they tried to control the vehicle. A large spray of white showed how the car hit into the dark tannin laced water of the swamp.

I opened my mind momentarily but the feeling was still present. I peered into the mind of the driver. Surprisingly it was a male. I was able to recognise that Knox behind this. I also got a glimpse of a small town where Knox was conducting her experiments away from the house. The test subjects were all adults and half were males. I didn't like any of them. It was as if Knox was looking for people like herself.

Another car was coming with more of the feeling but it stopped out of my vision. I couldn't detect anybody now. They had their shields up. I did the same. I stood and picked up my shell casings and scuffed where I had stood against a tree to hold my gun stable.

It was time to go. The roadway was inviting. I pulled out one of the phones we bought in Orillia and tried to call Kim. Reception was nonexistent here. The dogs and I walked east and soon came to a derelict building. With a quick peek I knew that nobody was here.

The house was resistant to thieves. All I wanted was a topo map. The dogs and I bypassed the house and ran across the rock still heading east. Every once in a while I tried to find a cell site so I could call out.

The dogs and I flushed game as we ran. I could almost believe we were home and I was running for fun. There was a lot of open spaces so running was not difficult. At the top of a hill about four kilometres from the ambush site I was able to pick up a signal. Now it was their turn to be out of range and I just called again until I reached them.

Kim immediately said, "What happened?"

It was not likely that somebody would intercept my call but I was naturally cautions now. "She sent them. Two cars, one's in the swamp with a man in it. She's using adults now and half of them are male. One car was warned so I never got to see it."

"Where can we pick you up?"

"I'm travelling the way I said. In an hour I may make it to the road. They can detect us better than we can them."

"We can feel them."

"I'll hurry."

Since I had a rest while waiting for the call I could run downhill fairly quickly. I didn't dare switch to overdrive because of the way it tired me out. Less than an hour later I spotted the van and made a very short call for them to stop. It took a long time to get over the water that ran beside the road.

Once in the van I had to use my verbal skills to tell Jess and Kim what I had done.

Kim was excited but it was Jess that said, "You should have killed the cock sucker."

This was mild compared to what I knew Jess usually thought. "They were only chasing us. If they were more of a threat, I'd have shot through the glass instead. I learned that Knox is behind this. We also know that Colins has not given up and that he still has Carstairs searching for us. I can't see how Knox' people caught on to us unless they're monitoring Carstairs' people."

"Could you tell if they had orders to kill us?"

"I don't think they do. I'm not sure though. I didn't want to leave my mind open to them for too long."

We drove north and then east once more. Jess put her foot to the floor. When we could we headed south and eventually hit the city of Peterborough.

There was a municipal airport. It was only a short time until we found a local flying club.

There were three people in the room. All of them looked at us as we came in. I opened my mind just enough to see that they were only interested in why we were here and how good our bodies looked.

A woman approached us and I didn't have to read her mind on how she thought. She asked Jess seductively, "Hi, Guys. What can I do for you?"

Jess smiled and tried to look embarrassed. "We had a problem and we're going to miss an important engagement. We'd like a ride to Perth as soon as possible. We can pay cash."

"Just you three?"

"Plus two terriers and two suitcases."

"That will cost two fifty plus tax for the plane and fuel. You need another hundred for the pilot. Do you have that much?"

"Yes, and if I can get in the air in ten minutes I'll throw in an extra hundred."

She turned to the other two and said, "A hundred to fly to Perth and another hundred if she lifts off in ten. Any takers?"

The two jumped to their feet but an older man was first. He raced over to us and said, "The name's Charley. I'm your pilot."

Jess smiled and said, "I'm Marty and I'm late."

It took twelve minutes to get into the air but Jess handed over a c note and Charley smiled as he put it in his pocket. Once we no longer felt the presence Jess said over headsets we were wearing to protect our ears from the engine noise, "Charley, we're on the run from my boyfriend. He's rich and wants revenge for my breaking up with him. I want our flight plan to say Perth but I want to fly to Pembroke. It's further and we can pay. You just can't phone back and say where you are really going. Do you have the time to help us?"

Charley thought for a minute and said, "I can call in sick. I'll miss work. This is going to cost me a hundred and fifty bucks plus a hotel room. The plane will have more time on it and fuel isn't cheap. I can do it for five hundred dollars more. I don't fly home until tomorrow morning. After that you're on your own. They'll know I came from Pembroke."

Jess smiled and said, "Thanks, Charley, you're a lifesaver. She turned to us and said in French, "We'll make it home in time."

I had to guess at her reasoning. Pembroke was just across the river from Quebec. Charley's mind would be searched and the reference to Quebec may throw the watchers off. It wasn't a good ploy but it may help.

We landed in Perth and Charley phoned his work to say he was coming down with something and would fly back tomorrow. Within minutes we were in the air again and flying north. This part of the trip was longer and we dozed off because it was relatively safe to do so.

We rented a car and drove to Ottawa where we bought a car rather than a van this time. We started the six hundred kilometre return trip by heading south east instead of west. It felt good to not have that presence near us. We drove to Espanola and south through Manitoulin Island and took the ferry to Tobermory. We were home a little over and hour after we left Tobermory.

It was so good to be home again. I felt safe but I knew that this was just a thin veneer. They were closing in and we had to prepare.

I put my mind to finding another home. I had reasoned that if I ran from Knox that I would run far, especially with the money available. I also figured that she would think the same. Now we had to make tracks.

London looked to be a good choice. It had a large population to hide in but was rural enough to let us find a large wooded area. For some strange reason my mind always wanted to pick Orillia to go to. Kim was the same way and I was worried anew of what we would find there.

I contacted an aggressive real estate agent in London and through text messaging I hired her. This was not the usual arrangement because if she tried to screw us I would sue her. She would still get to keep or share the commission if there was one but she would actually look to find people that did not have a listing yet.

The rest of my time was spent being the mother of the pack. Part of this time was devoted to pushing everybody to form better shields. I tried to make a game of it where a thought was hidden. Hide-and-go-seek was almost played like it was originally intended.

We were all good with the bow but now we practised to get better with it. There were some silencers for our pistols and we used the guns for practice too. The silencers altered the bullets flight but we learned to compensate.

Birthdays came and went, including my own. Being fourteen was not what I thought it would be but I was getting to where I would not have to hide as much.

September rolled around again. We had found a suitable property and we received photos through a chain of anonymous email sites. There was a good house on the property but not nearly as good as what we now had. Tiffany took Megan, Tatum, and Anthony south to see the property. We had stayed away from Owen Sound in case some of Knox' people came through looking for us.

I went for a run with the dogs that was designed to give us exercise and tire me out. My dreams were odd and I saw a man with me. I was married to him. He was fairly tall and physically fit. He was also nearly twice my age but that didn't bother me. Surprisingly, Kim was with us. She had a bun in the oven and I knew the father very well. He had to take care of both of us.

When I came back from the run, I saw a broken window. I quizzed the minds of those around. They had been playing ball and a gust of wind changed the trajectory. There was no sense getting angry. Boys and girls had to be kids sometime. I knew that the guilty party or parties would see that the window was repaired.

I had a shower and came out and got back to work. Our money had grown significantly since we relieved Knox of it. It was invested from offshore accounts and the returns were taxed very little if any.

Knox had her own strategies and I read her encrypted notes. I took her expertise and added to it. I was bringing in fifteen percent on average and this was after any charges were made to the funds. She pushed to get better returns and didn't care what was done or how the money was used.

Nicolas was a wiz with math and I gave him a few hundred million and he did much better than me. He was also very ethical in how he did this. He was teaching us how to invest and I felt like a proud mother though he wasn't much different in age from me.

The sale had gone through on the property in London. The house had been fitted with state of the art alarm systems. A goodly amount of cash was then spent to make the property look good before we moved in.

It hurt to sell our house so we didn't. We would leave with our clothes and personal belongings. Rental cops were contracted to watch the property in our absence but I felt that it would be years before we returned.

Bobby came into the room while drifting a few centimetres above the floor. This was nothing new. The drapes were pulled and nobody could see inside. What did surprise me was Joy floating behind him.

I was very pleased and said, "And when did you learn to float, young lady?"

"Just today. It was easy. I wanted to get the vanilla to make a cake and I found myself floating."

Her thoughts were coming through much clearer too. I tried to think of what brought this all about. Joy was too young to enter puberty.

She had read my thoughts and said, "I didn't take more Abicore, nor did I take any drugs or alcohol."

"Any strange food?"

"Bobby has been feeding me dick but that's not new."

Bobby chirped up, "I'm not entering puberty either and I feel brighter."

I examined his thoughts. He was right, he was a little more — awake. Abicore did this for us but we had stopped growing mentally. This led back to the drug itself. "Are you using a new batch?"

Joy immediately said, "Yes, that has to be it!"

Bobby closed off his mind immediately and we both looked at him. It was not polite to pry so I said, "Bobby, tell us what you know. It's important."

I could feel him prying into my mind then he showed me the images. The ball that had gone through the window a few weeks ago had hit a shelf and broke some glassware. Bobby had not been the only guilty party but he helped clean up.

Inside the raw Abicore mixture was an empty glass bottle with a glass stopper. I recognised this as the one that held diethyl ether. The shelf above the mixer had both empty and full bottles. Bobby made sure the machine would not start and then he recovered the bottle and stopper. He was worried about the damage and didn't know if the bottle had anything in it. It was only after taking some of this possibly altered drug that he had considered that the bottle had contained some ether.

The rest of the pack had already taken some of the new batch, even the dogs. It was too late to change anything so we treated this like an important experiment and everybody had to write down how this batch effected them differently from all the past batches they had received. I knew that minor changes could have a major effect. Ether was a chemical that facilitated major changes so I had no idea what was happening.

I tried to hide my worry but few of the others felt bothered though they had studied the notes Knox had on the DVD's. When four days came to an end I saw that they were performing at 85% rather than 75%.

I was in a quandary. Knox had pushed untested drugs onto us and the pack took them. I hated that process then as I did now. The only difference was that we had made this drug ourselves entirely by accident.

On the eighth day we had a meeting. The pack knew my feelings but they wanted to continue. We weren't a democracy but I wouldn't be the leader for long if I ignored the wishes of the pack. In the end I had to go along with what the they wanted.

Kim had taken the drug and moved up a tiny increment as did the rest. She said, "I don't know as much as you do about this but I know inside me that this is right."



"A feeling like that may be nothing more than a wish. Even if it's ESP I would question it. I love you all and I don't want you hurt."

"You may be right about feelings but I'm able to know what's on the other side of a playing card. Isn't that what Sam used to do?"

"You know he did but he — "

"Yes, he died because of what the drug did to him. But we never had his drug, only ones that were similar and we don't use amphetamines."



We had sex every night. The guys gave me their first load because I couldn't get the drug any other way. I got the girls first too. I knew that their secretions were what gave me the abilities I had.

I knew when I had sex with them that they would pass this new drug to me. This made the changes much slower with me. I had to make my own notes after I found that I was affected. My abilities changed only a minor amount but I knew this was cumulative. What I found was that my block got far better than the rest could do.

My discovery was shared with the rest and they picked the technique up quicker than I had.

Another surprise was that I could float just like Bobby and Joy. It was not long after that Dina could do the same.

We had held off our move for three weeks to do the tests but the time came when we had to go. Everything was cleaned up as if Knox' people were going to come in here and sift through everything for clues. I had to add Colins and Carstairs to our possible visitors.

Nicolas even managed to hack our satellite internet provider and delete all records of where we had gone on the net. It was doubtful if Knox or Colins could access this data but we were not taking any chances.

We purchased an expensive motorhome. This would provide more comfort and a better place to hide our weapons even if we lost a little in speed and manoeuvrability.

Sparky, Dancer, and Turbo were sedated. They were a weak link in our mental defences and they just had to take a nap for four hours until we got to our new home. Sniffer was a normal dog so she could stay awake. When we got underway she layed down with her family. She was concerned that they were sleeping but not overly so. Dogs had such short memories that we had to remind her every once in a while.

Jess, Kim, and I drove the car though we could tow it. It was when we were in Owen Sound that Tiffany contacted the security company to begin their duties. They had some codes to get into the house but some rooms were monitored just in case. A lawyer would even take care of paying taxes and hydro while we were away and all this was done over the telephone or the net.

When we got to Barrie we stopped in a large parking lot to say goodbye for a few days. We were all nervous because the last time had been very traumatic. There was something in Orillia for Kim and myself, and we had to find it. Jess was our driver though Kim now had her licence.

I hugged and kissed the humans then had to sit with the dogs. I petted the three that were asleep and the one that was not. Sniffer knew something was wrong but not what. She would remember me until she died but her short term memory was such that she would forget that I left her an hour after we parted.

Our cell phones that we bought here before could safely be used unless the opposition had some way of finding out what cell sites were used to make a call and then they would have a fix on both ends.

When we parted there were no dry eyes even though this was supposed to be for only a few days. Kim and I thought alike and when we recovered we went to look for some clothes to catch a man. She felt her abdomen a lot because she had the same dream I had. Whether this was a premonition or not we didn't know.



-------

Chapter 5


We kept our shields up and talked. Jess asked, "Do you know any more about your mystery man?"

I said, "We don't even know if he exists. It was only a recurring dream.

Kim said, "He does exist. I know it."

Kim was positive that this guy lived here and I hoped he wasn't a cripple or a guy ready to die. I doubted I could go through something like Tiffany had gone through. She never had the feelings we had so we were worried.

We bought sexy clothes but I was the one that was worried. I had just turned fourteen and not likely to attract a mate. A dick yes, but not someone that will say 'until death do us part'.

We shopped ourselves out and filled up the car with crap. We got a map to help us find this guy. He'd probably shit when we walked up to him and said, "Hi, I'm Piper and this is my sister Kim. We're going to be your two new wives." The guy was probably married with six kids. Hell, some could be older than me. Wouldn't that be just great. It would be better to just get back in the car and go to London.

Orillia was not that large and we searched it in detail. We drove around slowly as well as walking but found nothing. At least we didn't have that feeling that we were being watched.

That night we slept in a hotel. Kim and I cried ourselves to sleep. Jess held us and tried to give what support she could.

The next day we covered another part of the city. Jess went to see if she could find who was hurt in the accident so we could narrow the search down. Jess tried her best but nobody was going to give that information. None of them had the info in their heads for her to scoop up either.

On the third day I saw Greg but I didn't want him seeing us. I wish I could talk to him and give the description from my dreams but this would open a big can of worms, especially as Kim and I were underage.

A few times Kim or I would get a bit and we had to open our minds. This was dangerous but we were desperate. It was as if the guy knew we were after him and he didn't want to be caught.

Our hope was that the guy was single so we drove near the bars. Jess got propositioned a few times. Some people thought I was a whore but didn't come close. I still had my hymen. I protected it from Knox and I was damned if I was going to lose it to a guy that wanted to trade money for it.

We phoned Tiffany about the time she would have made the new home and found she was already there and loved it. Later calls showed that everybody was happy with the move. Days later they asked me to give up the search and try again later but this was too important to us.

It was on the ninth day that I felt something but it wasn't our man. The feeling of the watcher was coming back. They would check the hotels first if they thought we were here.

I asked Kim, "Do you want to come back later? They have to leave some time."

"We're so close. I know it."

Jess volunteered, "We'll keep our shields up and stay in the car. We may not be noticed. I want to find this man really bad myself."

During the day we collected our property from the hotel when Jess found one of her friends that would put us up for a day or two. We didn't cause any waves and Jess was not that anxious to renew old acquaintances. She slept with us and we didn't do anything but keep watch.

The next day the feeling of being hemmed in got bad and we slipped out of our search pattern. Once outside the city Jess said, "I can feel whoever it is getting closer and closer as if she's putting her hands around my throat."

"She?"

"Yes, I think we have a woman trying to catch us. She's going to call in reinforcements and we're going to be trapped. We have lots of money but not the types of contacts Knox has."

"I guess we better leave then. Let's go east. We know that area a bit better."

We had a chance to get a tank of gas and hurried out of the city. I spent my time getting the guns ready and wishing we had a slide down rear window. Kim was frightened but not quite as bad as last time.

Once over the bridge we headed north again. Jess was taking no chances and went as fast as she could. Kim and I closed our eyes to better concentrate on our other senses. We were leaving one but another was hurrying our way. It was hard to get a bearing but one was just getting stronger. I wracked my mind for the thousandth time trying to find how they were managing to track us. I had read some SciFi and one author coined the word espers for anybody that used ESP. Those tracking us would get this name, at least now.

Jess had no choice but to drive. The feeling got stronger and stronger so I knew they were going to get close enough to read our thoughts. I called out, "Hide your thoughts but read their's."

A minute later a grey car rushed by. There was a woman in it. She had her mind closed but I still found that she had orders to capture me for Knox. Knox was also sending out private detectives to capture me for a reward. I felt her trying to push into my mind. Her technique was different. I studied this as I fought her off. It took only seconds to get too far away to do much.

I said, "What did you find? Knox wants to capture me."

Jess said, "Three more are coming. It will take a while."

Kim said, "They want to torture us the way they were tortured. The monster used electrical shocks to get them to do what she wanted when she wanted. She pushes them until they're as crazy as she is."

"Any way of making a better shield?"

"Not that I can see."

The distance increased between us but probably not enough to get out of our pursuers range. I tried to sense ahead because they couldn't read my thoughts from this distance. I had just enough time to say, "Jess! Slow down!"

She did immediately and we crested a small rise to see a cop car. The cop had his hand held radar gun aimed our way. From the cop's mind I knew he was going to let us pass.

Jess slowed down enough for me to open my window and say, "Somebody's burning up the road behind us."

We hurried off perhaps too quickly but the cop was ready. In fact Jess didn't stop accelerating. Jess turned right at the next road and I wondered why. She said to my unanswered question, "The cops have another trap ahead."

The road we were now on was long enough that we didn't have to worry. Five minutes later, Kim said, "A new threat's coming our way."

This was either the other group that Knox sent or a team of normals she may have sent. We could do nothing about it and waited for the car to show up. I had my guns and the grenades ready.

The car didn't showed up but a helicopter did. Kim said, "That's it."

The occupants were in range of our minds and we read their thoughts. It was a team sent from Colins and Carstairs. The men in the helicopter radioed a team in cars our location and the location of the two cars following us. Carstairs had planted bugs like he had on our cars but on the vehicles Knox' team used.

We couldn't get away with this machine following us. I pictured the map in my mind. This time we had a topo map but we hadn't used it. For a moment I wondered if it was the memory of my need the last time or a form of precognition that caused me to buy this map. I didn't really have to study it because I could recall most of the details from memory alone.

The road climbed a tall hill and made a sharp turn at the top. I stretched out my mind to see the area. This is how talent was found, by trying hard in a stressful situation and this certainly applied. Neither of us were able to find anything.

"When we get to the top you have to slow for the turn. I'm getting out."

Kim said, "Me too. Two can put more lead in the air than one."

Jess said, "I'll continue and come back."

"It's a plan."

When we crested the hill, we found it bare but the road dipped and was hidden from view. Jess stopped quickly. There was a small rock cut to take the road past a minor rise. Kim and I bailed out and Jess surged forward in a cloud of gravel. I was in overdrive now. Kim looked to be slow and even ponderous. Focussing on my task, I started back up the road as quick as I could. I had to be careful because my actions were not the same that I had used for the last fourteen years. I had to lean forward more to get the speed but I also had to worry about strained muscles or ligaments.

I got near the crest and crouched down in the last of the rock cut. The helicopter was coming close. Instead of getting ready with the pistol I pulled out a grenade. These had a five second fuze but the fuzes weren't very accurate. I pulled a pin and released the handle. My mind had to compensate because saying 'two thousand' was not good at the rate my subjective time was passing.

I saw the copter and I had to calculate where it would be when I wanted to release the grenade. It actually passed us by when I reached back and threw the grenade. When the device left my arm, I knew I had strained my muscles. The grenade arched above the machine and came down just above the prop when it exploded.

Kim and I opened fire with our pistols even before the grenade went off. I put thirteen rounds into the body of the copter. Kim was not as fast but she put the same number of nine millimetre rounds into the machine. The grenade detonated when we were shooting. The pilot didn't have the reflexes to avoid anything thrown at him. It did jink to one side but instead of gaining altitude, it dove for the valley below.

The machine tried to pull up and managed to slow down but not enough. The tall conifers were topped by the spinning blades but a small clearing allowed the machine to come to a stop.

We could not see the machine past the trees even from our vantage point. There was no explosion or flames. There had been three people in the copter but we could only detect one now. Two had died and the last was wounded. Part of me wanted to provide first aid but we had to get out of here.

It was long minutes later that Jess raced back up the hill. We jumped inside and dumped all our shell casings and the pins from the grenade. Jess said, "Jesus, that was exciting. I wish I was as fast as you."

I was busy reloading the clip after putting the spare in the gun. I was excited and the thoughts of ending two people's lives didn't bother me very much at this point. When I found time to think, it would.

Kim was starting this process now so I said, "We're in a combat situation, Soldier. Save that bullshit for later. We have four cars chasing us."

I had pushed my thoughts into her mind to make sure my message was received. She said, "I'll be ok."

"You'd better. We're depending on you."

We headed back the way we had come and took a side road once more. Knox's people were approaching and behind them were the Carstair's people.

The road we were on got worse and worse. The maps said it went south to a regional road. I picked this way simply because it gave us a chance to get rid of those following us one way or another. The land got even more hilly. I remember the elevation lines on the map being close together.

We flashed by a large sign and Jess slammed on the brakes. We were going too fast for the road conditions. It was water washed gravel under our wheels and we slid one way then another.

The right side wheels went off the road and I hoped fervently that we wouldn't go over. The wheels caught for a second as we leaned toward the road. The car slid as rocks crumbled under the tires.

Jess climbed out her door and pulled down on the door itself to keep it balanced. Kim got out and did the same. There was a ledge we could fall onto and then there was a cliff. I threw out what we had in the back seat. The car had stabilised somewhat and I cleaned up what we would need. They were too close and we would never get the car out of this predicament in time.

I got out of the car and raced to the driver's seat and pushed the button to open the trunk. Out came out the extra weapons as well as our clothes for hiking.

The girls released the car but it stayed put now. We were all holding our breath but it didn't roll.

Jess said, "What do we do now?"

"Grab what's necessary and leave the rest." She and Kim were still stunned and I had to say, "Do it now!"

They took what they could as I sorted through the things I had to live by or die by. The bows came out with the quivers. They were intended to help us kill quietly. It was legitimate too.

I stripped off my city clothes and put on the more durable hiking garb. It was taking too long and I went into overdrive again even though I was not over the tiredness associated with the last time.

A daypack got what I couldn't carry in my hands. I kept casting my mind back down the road from where our pursuers were coming. They must know that they were catching up so they slowed down to a safe speed.

Just before we left I remembered the shell casings and the pins from the grenade. They were on the floor and I picked them up. We raced down the road to the bridge that was under repair. I threw the casings into the stream below and the girls helped me rip out the sign saying the bridge was being worked on. Maybe the car would fall through the roadway. The sign went into the stream but the cars were close.

We didn't make it over the bridge before the first car came into view and immediately followed. I waited for the car to get close before I turned and fired three rounds at the driver's head. The woman died and I considered taking her car but another car came behind but not into view. There were two people and they had been warned.

I wanted to run back and have it out with them but I could read thoughts that they were getting out assault rifles. We couldn't make it in time.

We had to slow them down and maybe there was a way. I gave orders to get to the far end of the bridge and protect me. I didn't wait to see if they would follow orders. I dropped my pack and bow then ran to the car.

The woman was dead and leaning back on the seat. I opened the door and took the keys from the ignition. The trunk opened quickly and I took out a rifle case and a pistol case. I opened the rifle case first. It was an AK-74, a good weapon. The clip was full and I saw a box of ammunition. With my hands full, I closed the case and hurried to the front of the car.

I could feel the two coming closer. One was a man and the other a women. They came into view but I was looking through Kim's eyes. They knew that we were going to kill and they fired wildly. Kim and Jess fired with deliberation.

I felt great pain and knew that Jess had been hit. I knelt and used the hood of the car and aimed at the man that felt satisfaction at hitting Jess. I squeezed off a round and the man was thrown backwards.

Bullets came my way. I ducked behind the engine but Kim was shooting now. I could read the woman's mind and popped my head up when she looked at Kim and fired. The woman pulled back and I felt her pain. I had hit her but it wasn't a killing wound. This was enough for me and I raced forward. Kim shot near the woman to keep her down.

I got within twenty metres when she got up ready to shoot me but Kim was ready and put a bullet into her head. She fell back and the threat we felt for the last few days was suddenly gone. Another threat was coming. This was Carstairs' people.

There were two cars and we could get away. I ran back and yanked out the body. It fell to the ground but not all the way out of the car. I had to back up and get in the passenger door. I was going to drive forward and the body would stay. The car wouldn't start. The starter worked but the motor wouldn't catch. I sat up as high as I could and saw the holes in the hood.

We could push it out of the way and take the second car but they were getting too close. Kim came running to me. I had somehow closed off my mind to the pain around me. Kim said, "Jess is hurt bad."

I risked a peek and saw that it was a very bad wound. It was possible that if we got her to the hospital in time she might make it. There was only us. I raced to Jess and found her smiling but her mind was locked tight. "You guys go ahead. The people following want to keep me alive and will do their best."

Tears were coming down my face as I tried to say with an upbeat sound, "You're pack and we aren't leaving you."

She used her voice because she didn't want to let us read her mind. "You won't have much choice. If you stay to protect me I'll die before you can get me to a hospital. If you run, they will try to rescue me."

Kim blurted out, "No! I want you to come with us. We have the first aid kit. We can sew you up."

Jess said, "They're almost here. Take what you want and go. Maybe you can find where they take me and rescue me."

Pack was the strongest bond I knew but logic was one of my best tools. Jess could possibly survive if we left and not if we stayed unless we surrendered. Then they wouldn't try to save Jess.

Jess was right, we had to go. I sorted through what we had and abandoned a lot. I opened the pistol case and found a gun no better than my own. I tried to make Jess comfortable and put more pads on her to slow down the bleeding. I left the bows and the extra clothes.

"Bye, Jess. I'll tell the pack all about this. We'll remember you always. My first girl is going to be called Jess."

Jess gave a smile and Kim yelled at me, "We can't leave her."

Jess said mentally, "Good luck guys. I love you. I hope your baby is going to have a better life than I had."

Kim yelled mentally, "No!"

I put my pistol in my left hand and slapped Kim hard. "Let's go, Soldier."

I had to put what I wanted Kim to carry in her arms and pull her down the road. We talked to Jess as we ran. She claimed she was happy with her life and would not have anything done different other than catching a bullet.

When we got to the top of a hill, we heard Jess say, "I have to talk later. They're here now."

We both knew her plan but there was nothing we could do. We saw through her eyes as she rolled onto her stomach. The pain was great but Jess ignored it. She sighted down her pistol and fired round after round until the connection to Jess was suddenly severed.

Kim cried out and tried to go back but I yanked hard enough to trip her.

"Jess gave her life for us. Are you going to throw that away?"

She wasn't thinking right and curled into a ball. We had no time and I reached down and pulled her hair as I slapped her face. Somehow I got her up and moving down the road.

It was hard to think of our own survival after what had happened. Knox' people were set back a pace but it was a sure bet that they were watching Carstairs' people. They were all ex-military and well able to track. All Knox had to do was tell her people to follow.

I chose a way that would get us off the road. We walked past the place and walked on rock but still left some tracks. A stream was ahead of us. Though it was a lot harder than walking, Kim and I floated back to the rock. Kim had stopped when I told her too. We turned around on the rock and backtracked while staying on rock even if we had to go out of our way.

We came to the way I wanted to go and climbed over a roadside barrier. Kim got my pack and rifle. I climbed down and looked into a one metre culvert. It was dry and untenanted. I climbed the loose rock and got our property and in a moment I helped Kim down.



"You want to hide?"

"What else can we do? I'm too tired to go much further. Overdrive is too hard on me. They'll expect us to keep running. We can read their minds and maybe even sneak back the way we came and take one of their cars."

"Can we take Jess?"

"Jess is gone, Kimmy. Only her body is left."

"But I want her."

"Yes, we all do. Now let's rest for a while and find out what they know about us."



It was easy to get into the culvert but hard not to stay together. Kim needed to be held and so did I. We still needed to watch both ends of the pipe. I went over in my mind everything I knew about Jess and shared it with Kim. Kim added her own memories and I learned more about the friend that had just left us.

People finally approached and we put up our shields as if they could read our minds.

They hurt because Jess had killed two, seriously wounded another and put a hole through the arm of a fourth. They were seething with anger with nobody to vent it on.

There were five men here and another was staying with the wounded. They were all experienced but not as a group. We had killed everybody in the copter since the pilot died later. They were going to have to form a team and remove the copter a piece at a time or concoct a story to show how it was damaged.

I saw images in their minds of what Jess had done. They had not been expecting such a vehement attack from a girl covered in her own blood. They had some respect for her which was only right.

They had cleaned up the cars from Knox' crew and seized everything including my bows. Along with this was some brown pills that had to be Knox's latest version of Abicore. Once Colins got this the secret would be out. Colins was almost as smart as Knox and almost as ruthless.

The team passed our position and went to the stream. All of them could track but were not experts. They went up and down the stream looking for tracks that came out but found none.

We could try for the cars but one man stayed near the stream where I put my footprints. I was tired from coming down from the adrenaline high and from slipping into overdrive. All this and the death of one of the pack just so we could find a stupid normal male. I cursed the man but cursed myself even more for letting my body dictate to me.

Kim said, "It's ok, Piper. I'm the same way as you. If you didn't come then I would have come alone. So would you."

"You're right, but the cost's still too high."

We were in the culvert for an hour and a half before the team reassembled. They started to backtrack and look for our tracks. They weren't sure where we were but were going to check everything.

They checked each metre of ground until one man climbed over the railing to look below. The end of the culvert was visible and he tossed the idea around whether to check it or not. He was a professional and climbed down.

I regretted staying here now for what I was going to do. I was not going to let them catch me alive. I would go out just like Jess if we could not get away.

The man got within two metres and I had my gun aimed at the opening. I was going to shoot as soon as his head came into view. I could feel his anger and only a little fear. A quick glance through the rest of the team and I had a rough idea just where they were.

"I'm sorry, Kim, but we have to fight. If I have to leave I want you to carry on."

"Don't say that! Ever!"

The man outside the culvert suddenly felt an excruciating pain in his leg. He called out and rolled down the hillside. From the trees came another arrow that almost hit the man.

The team ducked and then started using their pistols to shoot at somebody in the trees. It had to be Knox' people but when I looked I was stunned. The man we were looking for was here.

Kim focussed on him and pushed out the imperative, "Run!"

More shots were heard and our man ran. Behind him ran three men. One ran past the end of the culvert to reach his comrade.

We worked our way backwards pulling our property behind us. When we got out of the other side we moved to the side of the incline.

Kim said, "He needs us."

"I know. He saw what happened and saw us hiding. Tell him where we're going."

Kim did the honours and we ran down the gully. I tried to be careful of tracks but speed was more important. I concentrated on my memory of the topo and led Kim over some rock.

I was about to go down another gully when Kim said, "Don't go that way. There's a swamp at the end."

I looked in Kim's mind and saw the image. The guy's name was Herb Stewart. He was taking up mind reading pretty quickly. I didn't introduce myself because he was holding on by his fingernails. He pictured the land and where we were then showed me going east. I wasn't going to turn down his advice.

When I could, I aimed us back to the cars. Kim didn't object and I guess Herb didn't either. I looked toward Herb's mind but I couldn't get in. It was as if he was far away.

When we stopped for a short break I asked, "What's Herb doing?"



"I don't know. It's odd but he can cut me off. He has to choose to open his mind to me. I couldn't get a lot but he was out here hunting and felt compelled to walk in this direction. He felt that we needed him."

"How does he do that?"

"I have no idea."

"Is he a precog?"

"If he is, he's a natural."

"What else?"

"Nothing. I never had time. I'm reaching him from far away as if he's the other pole of a magnet. He pulls my thoughts."

"I wonder if he's just horny and sent his thoughts out when that ambulance rushed by?"

"I hope it's us and not just sex."

"Me too."



Kim said seriously, "I'm going to fuck him silly even if it's just for sex." She wasn't thinking rationally but Herb was still the first man we ran across that was worth anything.

We climbed a ridge and descended into a wide ravine. This led back to where our car was stranded — and Jess.

There was no path and few game trails. We pushed ourselves on adrenaline alone. We took breaks when we could. Twenty minutes after going over the ridge I knew we weren't alone.

Kim and I raced on. I'd stay and fight but I couldn't see any place to lay an ambush. There were too many small trees. In a few moments I knew we had another person on our tail.

Kim called Herb to tell him where we were and that we were being chased. There was no reply. I tried this time and got the same result. All we could do was run.

We got near the fateful bridge. It was thirty metres over the water and there was some steep sides we would have to traverse if we were to get under it. Above us was a man that had to be in radio contact with the rest. All he had to do was look over and shoot down at us.

I reached out for anybody nearby and only found our two pursuers. They were hot and tired but mostly angry. They thought we had hit two of their people with our bows. Herb had to have got one more.

It was slow going over the loose rock and I was worried that we wouldn't make the other side by the time our shadowers caught us.

We just made it to the trees when I heard rock sliding over rock behind us. I turned quickly and used my pistol. The range was too far and I was pissed off at myself because I had a rifle to do this. Kim and I hurried on and the man shot at us. We crouched low and hurried as fast as we could.

A few rounds were heard cutting the leaves and branches around us. The man was very angry now. He would rather kill than capture us. Kim was frantic and calling Herb but we couldn't connect.

We got closer to the water and found a game trail. It was rough and the only thing going for it was that there were fewer thorns to catch us. The stream was wide here and possibly shallow. I wondered if we could ford it and lose our tracker. A quick look showed that the water was dark with rotting vegetable matter. It could be a metre deep or ten. I ran on.

Ten minutes later a shot rang out and Kim stumbled ahead of me. I felt her pain and almost collapsed. I was so tired that I had stopped monitoring those that chased us. He was going to shoot again and just as he thought he would hit my legs, I moved and the bullet missed. I reached Kim and pulled her off the trail and behind a tree.

Waves of pain were coming from her as I got the rifle out. He was too close. The tracker stopped now. He knew I was armed. He was going to circle me but instead used his radio to report his position. Somebody would be coming from the other direction to cut us off.

The tracker could not hear our steps and cautiously moved forward. He was not in my sight but I could see what he was looking at. I knew roughly where he was. I tried to move but I couldn't function. I was just too tired.

With a moment to spare, I checked Kim. She was not making any noise though with the amount of pain she was in I would. The kit was in my pack and I opened it and then cut away her pants. The bullet went through her calf but missed the bone.

Kim screamed mentally when I put a tourniquet around her leg to stop the blood loss. I got two pressure bandages on the wound and taped it before I knew that the man that did this was too close.

He came low and in short moves. Behind him was another man doing the same thing. I got off one shot before the slide locked back from an empty clip. I was just too tired to think straight. I had to concentrate on where the spare clip was. By the time I had it in the gun the man was in front of me. His gun was aimed at my head and he mentally dared me to aim at him.

He gave a little jerk and his eyes went wide. Only then did I feel his pain. The pain was as much as Kim felt and I was sorry for him. He fell over and I saw an arrow sticking out of his back. His mind knew he was dying. He tried to turn and kill his assailant but he only made part of the turn before he fell the rest of the way.

He looked at me for help. His plea to be saved hurt. I could do nothing even if I wanted to. I remembered the second man much too late but didn't see him or even feel his presence.

Suddenly I heard, "I'm here now. Point the gun down."

I knew who it was but it took me a while to understand. The gun went down and I just turned back to Kim. She was in a lot of pain but I could see part of a smile.

A man rushed by me and bent over Kim's leg. He was dressed in a camo outfit. He laid his bow down and began inspecting the wound. I managed to get beside Kim and held her head. I could see that the guy was competent. He had our med kit opened and started to clean the wound.

When Kim flinched with the pain, he reached behind him and took out his own kit. In seconds he injected her with something. I couldn't even read his mind to see what it was.

He worked for five minutes and had Kim stretched out and very well bandaged.

I tried calling him but finally had to say, "Thanks, Herb. Somebody else is coming from the direction we were going. I don't know how long it will take for him to get here."

"You're welcome, Piper. Now if you want us to be friends, keep out of my mind."

This shocked me because this was the way we let each other know how we really felt. "I'll try but we we're not just being snoopy. We have a block that nobody goes behind. The front part is what we want people to see."

"I'm not one of your people."

"But I thought—"

"You thought wrong. I just killed two men and wounded two others."

"They were trying to kill us."

"You killed a few of them too."

"It was self-defence."

"I feel like a little fish as two sharks fight it out."

"We came looking for you."

"Why?"

I didn't know this man at all. I wanted him to love us and eventually give us children. Why was he being so stupid. He was a lot like most of the normals. I said instead, "We have to find what intel these guys have on them."

"Leave them alone."

I just stared at handsome face and said, "I'm fourteen. My IQ is now around 190 because of a drug. I have always been curious but only recently have I been able to absorb information like a sponge and process the data. I don't know everything but I plan on gaining as much as I can. These people are trying to kill us. I'm going to look through what they have so my sister and I will be able to stay alive."

I gave him a few seconds to assimilate the data then I turned the dead man over. The man had not started to get stiff and it was not hard to turn him over, which broke the arrow. I found the wallet, cell phone, notebook, gun, spare clips, knife, small radio, sunglasses, watch, pen and some coins.

The second man had a arrow going through his skull which is why I didn't know he died. This man had the same equipment even to the type of knife and notebook. I would expect dog tags but they had none. The names in the wallet didn't match those that had been in their heads.

When I looked back, I saw Herb unstring his bow and then lash it to his back. He picked up the first aid kits and put them in my pack. He took the pistol and inspected it before putting it in the waist of his pants at the back. Finally, he picked up Kim almost effortlessly and she wrapped her arms around him. I could feel her joy at this.

Herb just looked at me and I took what I wanted and stuffed my pack. The AK-74 went on my shoulder and I held my now fully loaded Glock.

I took a step back the way we had come but Herb went the other way. I said, "Somebody's coming from that direction."

"There's a way up if you know where to look."

Herb almost ran carrying Kim. I heard her call out in pain mentally but she said nothing to Herb. He jumped from rock to rock and climbed the incline to the bottom of the cliff. There was a small trail here too but there were no trees to hide behind.

We made good time and in fact it was faster than the trail below. About the time we came to a cleft in the rock I heard Kim mentally say, "He's coming."

"Where?"

"About five minutes away. He's hurrying now. He can't reach the men and he thinks they're dead."

Herb looked up the incline and raced up as if he just started his day. I had far less to carry and I couldn't keep up. He had to lean with his back to the wall and inch his way along. Kim just held to his neck and didn't worry in the least. This was almost disgusting except I wanted him too.

I staggered to the top just as the man came into view. I dropped down to watch and read what the man was thinking. He was wary. Two men did not respond. A man in camo was seen. The unspoken assumption was that the man was with us all along. The presence of my bow had substantiated this.

I dug for where the wounded men would go and found that the one most hurt would not go to the hospital. They were looking for somebody they could trust to operate. Failing that, they would sew him up as good as they could after taking out the bullet.

I found out more about Carstairs and Colins. Colins was quite rich and Carstairs was demanding a lot of money for this search. So far the man had collected nearly five million dollars. The amount would go up considerably when he learned of all the men he had just lost.

Kim and Herb had gotten far ahead and I hurried to catch up. I found them at the cars left by the team. Kim was trying to get Herb to find what was taken from the Knox team cars. We wanted the drug for testing and to keep it away from Colins.

Herb didn't want to wait, he wanted to go now and Kim wasn't responding to reason. Herb managed to hot wire a car while I searched for the drug. I stayed away from the other side of the bridge because I knew what I would find there.

One car was missing. It had the two wounded men and the two dead. The driver and two others wounded with arrows were making their way here now. When I got to our own car, I took out all our remaining property and then very reluctantly walked over the bridge past the body of the woman.

Jess was laying facing down. A bullet had made a mess of the top of her head. Kicked over to one side was her gun, pack and other things we had decided to take.

I squatted beside Jess and cried to her as if she could hear how sorry I was for getting her into this.

I felt a shock as a hand touched my shoulder. It was Herb. I just stood up and hugged him with all my might. Over and over again I told him about Jess and how she was a wonderful woman.

When I recovered, Herb released me and then gently turned Jess over. Her eyes stared openly and Herb gently reached out and closed them.

Herb said softly, "I forgive you, Jess. I hope you found at least a little love before you died."

I cried again and felt myself being picked up and carried. Later I was put in the seat beside Kim and my seatbelt put on as if I was a child. I cried on Kim and she cried with me as I let her see what I had witnessed.

The SUV finally started. Herb turned us around and hurried down the road. When I came at least partially to my senses I said, "This car probably has a tracker in it."

"Kim told me and I took it out."

I had nothing left to say and went back to holding my sister.

Some time later we stopped and Herb began to transfer everything in the SUV to a pickup. I got out and helped as good as I could but Herb was strong and quick. When he was done, Kim and then I were put in the pickup as if we were children.

Herb wiped all the surfaces we had touched in or on the SUV with an alcohol soaked rag. When he was done, he went over it one more time. He drove out to the road we had left.

I couldn't enter his mind. He had this serious look. I didn't know how to handle him. He was everything I wanted but he treated me like a child. He was bullheaded but he was also kind. I desperately wanted to know him more but he wouldn't allow me into his mind. I wasn't sure but I thought he might know if I tried to get into his head. How he did what he did was beyond me.



-------

Chapter 6


We drove for a half hour and turned onto a paved road but at the next road, he turned around and went back. I didn't have to be told that he was leaving false tracks with his truck tires. It was probably not necessary but I liked the way he was careful.

Nothing was said and I was in no mood to talk. We drove for over an hour, finally getting back to paved roads. He seemed to know where he was going and turned onto a smaller road. We came up to a cut off and we drove down far enough for Herb to get out and unlock the chain holding two railway ties together. I got out too and closed the door. Herb got back in the truck and drove forward. I tried my best to pull the chain up to the catch but I couldn't do it.

Herb said in a surprisingly deep and caring voice, "Let me do it, honey. You're strong but you need to be big to do this."

It was then that I found myself crying like a baby about not getting the goddamned chain to get into place. I felt a jolt of pleasure when he called me honey. He escorted me back to the truck and helped me get in. Once seated he said, "Do up your seatbelt. I see too many people hurt that don't use them." I did as he asked and we drove forward.

The driveway was very long and winding through the trees. This way he didn't have to listen to the traffic. The house was fairly new but small. A large German Shepherd was chained to its house by a long and heavy chain. From the way it lunged at us, I knew the chain had to be strong.

I pushed at the dog the image of it being quiet and then getting a treat. The dog stopped what it was doing and stared at me. I sent it images the way I did Sniffer. This dog was not as intelligent and was also crazy. It didn't understand its place. Humans were very odd to him.

"Where do you keep his food?"

"In the back shed in an old freezer."

I looked around and walked through the ring the dog made as it paced the limits of its chain. I found the old freezer and opened it. There was no power. It was the metal case that was used to keep animals from getting into the kibble. I went back to the dog after closing the shed and fed the dog by hand. It wanted to jump at me until I ordered it down.

It ate voraciously but I got him to slow down more. When he was done I petted him and sent him the image of him fitting into a larger pack. He wagged his tail at me and seemed to understand this idea. I showed him images of Sparky, Sniffer, Dancer, and Turbo. There were even some dog moves that they did when greeting a friend.

I went back to the truck only to see Herb staring at me. "What did you do to him?"

"We have four terriers. Three have been elevated to the intelligence of a six-year-old child. The fourth is unchanged. She is still pretty smart. I sent your dog the images of our pack."

"Why didn't he jump on you?"

"I showed him how he was supposed to act within a pack. He's neurotic. He needs exercise and a place where he feels he belongs."

"The damned dog runs off."

"Maybe I can talk to him about it and come to an agreement about appropriate behaviour."

"Are you going to do the same to me?"

I just couldn't take it anymore and went to the truck and tried to get Kim out. She knew how close to the ragged edge I was and cried with me. We didn't get very far before I was carried into the house and put on a large bed and my boots taken off. In a moment Kim was placed beside me. Our crying started again and Herb found a thin sheet to cover us because it was warm in the house. I think we fell asleep after a while.

It was the smell of fried meat that woke me up. Kim was still asleep. With a little peek I saw that she was tending her three babies. I didn't need to see Herb's face to know who the father was. I didn't know if I dreamed the same thing but I didn't feel jealous for some reason.

When I went into the kitchen I saw Herb cleaned up and his grease paint removed. He had a rugged look but it was still like a boy. I decided that he was handsome. I pictured my own face and then that of Herb and tried to see what our children would look like. Most were better off looking like me but then most of them were girls. The boys could be encouraged to look and act proper.

"What are you looking at, honey?"

For some reason I didn't want to tell him the truth. "Just that you clean up very well."

"Why, thank you. Would you like to do the same? The washroom is around the corner. Go easy on the water because it takes time for the well to recover."

This I could understand but not why he hadn't put a cistern in or even a tank to hold enough water. Then I belatedly thought of finances. Perhaps there were more important places for money to go. Not everybody was as close to a billion dollars as the pack was. "Thanks, honey — I kinda like that name."

Herb was a little shocked and I gave him a small smile. I used the toilet and then found the luggage we brought. When everything I needed was ready I got in the shower. I started to do my hair and I suddenly saw Jess' hair all coated with blood and flies. I pushed the thoughts away quickly and scrubbed my hair as fast as I could. I tried to wash away the blood but it didn't work.

I found myself being picked up. I was cold and crying. Herb was so easy to hold onto. He took me into the living room and used a towel to dry me. I let him do this for me then had to take the towel and do the spots he avoided. My crying had slowed down but hadn't stopped. By holding onto Herb, the bad thoughts were just that much further away.

It was a while later that I recovered enough to say, "Thanks, honey. I needed to be held. I kept seeing images of Jess."

"How did you meet her?"

"That's a long story and I'd like Kim to be with us."

"That's ok with me. Would you like to eat now?"

"I'm famished but I don't want to get off your lap. Will you carry me to the kitchen?"

Herb looked very worried but gently picked me up and slid me onto the couch. I tried to hold on but I realised that this was not a good idea.

All I could do was ask, "What's wrong, Herb?"

He looked in the kitchen and said, "Dinner will get cold." He then just walked away as if he didn't want anything to do with me.

I tried to think about what I had done wrong. I had stepped on something sensitive and wished that I was more of a people type person to understand better. I relied on reading their minds to know if I was straying into dangerous territory and I could not do this with Herb.

I heard, "Piper, I need my diaper changed. Remember, you promised."

"Coming, sweetie."

"Herb, I need help with Kim. She needs to go to the bathroom."

Herb hurried to the bedroom and simply picked Kim up very gently. I was there beside her and she asked, "How did you manage to get naked with him?"

"I think he's afraid of me."

"Maybe you have to act meek and sweet like me?"

"He attracts both of us so and I just hope he's attracted to us."

When we got to the bathroom I got Herb to hold Kim while I took off all of her clothes. She winced when the jeans came over her bandages. Herb instinctively held her closer and that slut just hugged him tighter. Then she mentally laughed at me. I was still a good sister and took off her panties.

Herb put Kim on the toilet and tried to leave. I said, "You have to hold her. Then she has to have a shower. Do you have some plastic and tape to keep her bandages dry?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"The kitchen drawer beside the fridge. The tape is under the sink. The scissors are hanging up beside the sink."

I went to get the tape and looked for plastic grocery bags. I stalled as long as I could. Kim said mentally and vocally, "Can you help me."

"You mean?"

"I can't stand or I'll fall."

There was some silence and I wished I could read Herb's mind for the millionth time. Kim moaned so I could hear it then she bent over and Herb had to clean her bum too. The slut liked her bum fondled.

I heard, "So do you."

"I do not."

Herb put a large blanket on the floor and placed Kim on it. He worked very quickly to put the plastic carefully around the wound. Kim still hurt a lot but she had compartmentalised it. She moved one hearing aid into place because it had come loose.

I got in the bathtub first and Herb gently placed Kim's head on my lap. Kim's wounded leg was on the edge of the tub.

We could see Herb trying to come to a decision and I said, "I have to hold her. You're going to have to wash her."

"Can't you do it?"

"She's bigger than me and I don't want the wounded leg falling into the water. You have to hurry up. It's cold on my bum and her back."

I remembered her hearing aids and gently removed them and handed them to Herb. He looked at them for a moment then put them on the counter.

Herb tried to act professional and started to clean Kim. His hands nervously lathered soap into the cloth for much longer than needed. His eyes were on mine or Kim's but his ceiling seemed to hold his interest a lot.

When he started it was with her hand. He had to hold her hand because she was so weak. He caressed her arm more than he cleaned it. The slut in my lap had to move her legs apart as far as she could and even flexed her pelvis to a better angle.

Herb must have noticed but he didn't look. I upped the ante by taking the soap in my hands and washing Kim's neck but soon I was down to her chest cleaning her very dirty breasts. Kim squirmed and cooed especially when I worked on her nipples. They stuck up as if looking for Herb. I had to admit that mine were erect too.

Herb's eyes could not stay away from Kim's breasts once he got a good look. Hers were larger than mine and I was envious. When I casually rubbed my fingers across the little erasers, Herb swallowed as if he were going to his death.

I cut back the visual stimulation by moving one hand down her chest to her abdomen. The idea was to draw his attention to her hungry bush. His eyes followed once Kim moaned as my hand pulled the skin taut around her clit.

After a few plaintive sighs, Kim took an active role and pulled Herb closer and took away the wash cloth. She placed his hands on her breasts and moved them the way she wanted.

Herb was an intelligent man and thus a relatively fast learner when guided the right way. His hands began to work on their own while I got closer to her clit.

Kim looked at Herb's face until their eyes locked. She took no chance now and pushed out her thoughts, "I'm yours. I will always be yours. You are my man. Make us one."

I was not sure that the Herb heard this through his block but his hands moved quicker as if remembering what to do.

Kim pushed out, "Kiss me, Herb. I'm your woman and the mother of half of your children. I need you desperately."

He bent forward and moved his hands from her breasts to her face to give Kim a kiss that was both passionate and gentle. Kim had no restraints and hugged him tightly to her. I moved my hand to her clit and rubbed furiously as only I could and Kim started to shake and then scream into Herb's mouth.

Herb's arms went around Kim protectively but maybe it was because she might escape. Kim's body shook and shook. My fingers on her clit started it but somehow she was making some sort of bond with Herb.

Herb groaned deeply as he pulled Kim to him. Kim almost killed him with the boa constrictor squeeze that came from the intensity of her orgasm. After the orgasm had reached its peak, Kim went from an armed snake to a carnivore and tried to devour Herb's face.

I slowed my fingers down while monitoring Kim so she had the best I could give. I hoped that Herb's block would go down but it didn't. I contented myself to just visualising the two of them and feeling what Kim felt through our link.

Kim showed passion and Herb submitted to it. He was swept along where Kim wanted him to go. Her mental voice called out to Herb all the time. She told him of her love and commitment. I think Herb was lost in a giant whirlpool and there was no escape for him other than in cooperating.

Kim allowed her man to get the occasional breath of air and then went back to her feast. Eventually she held him out and said, "Rinse me, please, and then take me to bed."

She just stared into his eyes until he put the mental information into place and did as she asked. I made sure her mons and bum were clean and free of soap. Herb just picked Kim up and walked like a zombie to the bedroom without taking his eyes off of her's.

I had time for just a rinse in case Herb wanted desert. I took the towel with me and was partially dry by the time I found the two. Kim was kitty corner on the bed with her wounded leg bent like her good one. She was in pain but I couldn't see it in her face. Herb was after her clit like a wild man and Kim had a firm grip of his hair.

I climbed on the bed beside Kim and watched as I played with my own clit. Herb saw me only twice because he kept his attention on Kim. Kim came quicker than normal and I was happy for her but I felt a little lonely. Having sex in the pack meant that nobody got this way.

After my own orgasm, I relaxed for only a minute before I got off the bed. I bent down and undid Herb's shoes then his socks. He helped me by moving his feet for me.

His belt and pants were next. He must have a second brain like a large dinosaur because he moved his body for me while still paying full attention to Kim. With his pants and underwear off, I admired the view. He had dark hair all over him but it was not that thick. His muscles were certainly strong. There were a few minor scars but what attracted me the most was his smell. It was as if I waited all my life to find this perfume and here it was.

Kim urged Herb to move his body northward and he dutifully did. I had the chance to hold onto his dick and put it into my sister's opening. They both looked at me while I did this. Kim gave her thanks and Herb looked like he did the same.

Herb pushed in slowly. Kim looked into his eyes all the time as if urging a small frightened animal to come to her. Once he was all the way in he relaxed and looked down at Kim. I climbed on the bed and stood on my knees as I undid his shirt and helped him take it off.

Kim's hands came up and rubbed his hairy chest. Herb apparently liked the feel of this because he closed his eyes for the first time. When he opened them Kim said, "We are yours, Herb. Now take me and fill me up."

Herb moved continuously but had to slow down because he was going too fast. Kim's leg throbbed with the bouncing so I played with her nipples to distract her.

Kim kept up her mental monologue telling Herb what she felt physically with her mind. Herb came first but stayed hard and just continued after slowing for a rest.

The slut talked of how it felt so good to be awash in little wigglers but she used nicer terms. She didn't even give any jibes back to me because she was just too focussed on our man.

I removed a hand from Kim's breast and replaced it with my mouth. Kim loved this and the bouncing on the bed got slower and more rhythmic. My free hand stole slowly down to find Kim's clit and the important piece of meat going in and out of her.

Kim's explosion came. Her almost mindless chant got to both of us and I came too.

I pulled back so Herb could get close to Kim without squashing her though I was sure she wouldn't mind in the least.

He started to kiss her tenderly and she replied the same way. Finally Herb pulled back enough to say, "I've never had sex like that before."

I was the one to say, "Herb, Kim is nearly deaf. She was that way at birth. She doesn't usually use the hearing aids because we all communicate with our minds. For better or worse, Kim is committed to you with chains she cannot break. We hoped that similar chains went from you."

"Commitment? You don't even know me."

Kim pushed into our minds, "We came through Orillia when you were in an ambulance. We were being chased and had to leave the city instead of investigating. We didn't know what or who you were. The back of our minds did. After that we had dreams of you every night. We came back here to find you but Knox and Colins found us instead."

"Both of you?"

"She is my sister. There is something similar in both of us and we find you the perfect mate. We worried that you would be married with kids. We worried that you would be old or ugly. If you were we would still want you. It would break our hearts but we decided to leave if you were married."

"I'm not married."

"I think you are now. You have two wives. We'll make a team and a sub group of the pack. We'll have your children."

"Children?"

"Does that frighten you?"

"I—I don't know. I wanted children once until Jess took my wife away."

We both said, "Jess?"

"Yes. She took Nicki from me and I still look for her on occasion."

I said, "I'm sorry, Herb, but Nicki will never return."

His attitude changed. "What do you mean?"

"Go get a bowl of water and we'll clean up your wife and talk."

Herb pulled out and reached over for some tissue and handed them to Kim. She used them to stanch the flow. He bent down and kissed her tenderly as she wrapped her arms around him.

When he rose, Kim said, "You better kiss your other wife too. She feels left out."

Herb looked at me and I reached out with my arms. This was enough and he kissed me too. It was different than kissing a boy and it was different from kissing a woman or girl. I was kissing my mate and this made it very special.

He looked at me and hurried to the kitchen and brought back a metal bowl. He was the one to clean Kim and he bent over to kiss the object of his attention. Kim's hands shot out and grabbed his hair.

I said, "You start that and we'll never have this talk."

Herb and Kim reluctantly parted and the bowl was put on the floor. I began by saying, "We can use this method of communications but you'll eventually have to lower your block. We can communicate many times faster and much more accurately.



"Kim and I ran away from a father that beat us. We fled to Toronto and lived on the streets for a month and a half until a person found us and directed us to a place to stay.

"Sheila Knox is one of the brightest women alive. She is also a sociopath. That means she has no conscience and this makes her very dangerous. She went to university to learn organic chemistry. She used the knowledge to make all sorts of drugs. Money and power were her goals. She made hundreds of millions of dollars over the years selling the illegal variety that she made. Some was invested but there was simply too much to be made known.

"Sheila hates men with a passion. She has a mansion staffed by women. Young girls that like the attention of other women stay there. They get an education and a chance to work for Knox one day if they're good. If they aren't good she ships them off to brothels. Some she even owns.

"She works in the pharmaceutical industry to keep abreast of new developments. She made important drugs to help mankind but also addictive drugs for monetary gain.

"One drug called Abicore was given to her to test. It was supposed to make marginally intelligent people more attentive and stimulate their memory to work better. It didn't work well and caused brain lesions in some of the subjects.

"One subject took speed with the drug and learned how to read minds. Knox snapped him up and put him in the school so she could study him and keep the secret safe."



"So a drug allows you to do this?"

"Yes. The drug, when used with speed, causes more brain lesion, insanity, and outright death. Knox didn't care and still experimented. I pushed very hard to get control of the subjects. Knox was usually busy and this worked out for us. I fudged the results to underplay what could be done. The subjects read Knox' mind and knew she would kill them on a whim.

"Gordon Colins III works for Stethbridge. He is almost as bright as Knox and very ruthless but not quite up to Knox' level. He learned of the effect from us but keeps the secret from the men he hires to find us.

"We ran from Knox and formed a home for the thirteen humans and four dogs. We are in constant fear of being found. Knox found more subjects and the survivors were tortured into producing a mental ability or die trying. The people she chose were amoral in the first place. They were pushed very hard to extend their range. They can find us much easier than we can find them."

"Why are the two groups after you?"

"Colins knows that we can read minds. He wants to find out the mechanism. Carstairs works for Colins. His men are the ones that you fought. They now have some samples of the drug the three people took. They don't know what it is but Colins will suspect.

"Knox is after us to eliminate us. We know about her past crimes as well as her new ones. We are also competition and a way for the world to learn about the drug.

"There is one more reason. When we left Knox, we tried our best to cripple her. She was rich and would use the power that money brought to find us. I transferred all of her money I could find into my accounts then called the tax man to go after her."

"I can see why she's angry at you. What about Nicki?"

"First, you have Jess all wrong."

"How?"

"She was part of our pack. We read her mind very deeply. The drug increases our intelligence and memory. I have an image of Jess in my own mind. She told us of her past. She told us of those she loved. Nicki was one but Nicki didn't return the love. When Nicki got to Toronto, she used Jess' help and contacts to learn her way around and then left Jess. She was soon on drugs and became a prostitute for women.

"Knox scooped up many disposable people and two were Nicki and Jess. Jess survived. Nicki went catatonic and was killed. Her body was cremated in a modified ceramics kiln behind her home."

Herb bent over and cried. We held him and cried with him. We could only guess at what was going through his mind at this time.

When Herb sat up, Kim reached out for some tissues and cleaned his face.

I said, "My words were harsh and I'm sorry for telling you this way. Dragging out the process hurts even more."

"So Sheila Knox killed my wife?"

It hurt to hear him say wife but I said, "Knox had her people do it. She has assistants that destroy what she thinks of as useless lab animals."

This was a shock to Herb and he sat up. "How can you say that? She's human, not an animal."

"I was speaking from that woman's perspective. She has no conscience at all. The fact that she's so intelligent means that this attribute is reinforced."

"She has to be stopped."

"I agree, but there are few methods available to us. To denounce her would admit to the world of a synthetic method of bringing about mental telepathy. That would disrupt everybody on the planet. To kill her would be best. We helped her enemies but none of them have succeeded. To tell any government about this would imperil all of our lives. They would want to contain the secret and that means capturing us for experiments or to keep us quiet as they made a new army."

"Yes, it means either everybody knows about it or no one. How come nobody seems to know?"

"Knox will kill anybody that might talk. Colins wants the power and money this drug will bring so he will be quiet until he can release the secret to a select few."

We talked more on this subject until Herb noticed that his slut was playing with her pussy hair and clit. His thinking went to pot. From some inner recess he found the power to pick Kim up and take her to the kitchen instead of eating her where she was.

I said to them both, "She is such a slut. I just hope our children don't take after her."

"Our children?"

"You have to lower that block. We're your mates. We're going to get knocked up at some time."

"How am I going to take care of both of you? I'm not Superman."

Kim said, "You're my Superman. You carried me around like a baby."

I could see that this pleased Herb. He was smart but still so simple at times. He said, "I keep in shape. I have to as a fireman."

Kim said, "See, we didn't even know that. You have to lower your block a bit. We won't hurt you. We'd love to find out how you do that."

"I don't know how I do it. It's instinctive, I guess. When I realised that the voice wasn't my imagination, I closed up. It was hard to open again to let you in."

"Well, you can feed your family and later we can see how you do this."

"How?"

"Do you believe that I consider you my husband?"

There was a pause then Herb said, "No."

"Do you believe I would harm the father of my children?"

The answer was quicker, "No."

"Then we're part way there. It starts with trust."

"But my mind is a filthy place."

"We have been in many minds. I doubt very much if yours is any worse than average. If you want a dirty mind we have to introduce Joy and Bobby to you. They're perverts. Bobby is seven and Joy is eight."

"Perverts?"

"They read adult minds and know all about that kind of thing. They like what they find. Your mind will be a breath of fresh air compared to them."

"Maybe my block is because I know my mind is filthy."

"That could be true. We just have to show you that what you think of as filthy is what everybody else also thinks."

We ate our meal. I put tidbits into Herb's mouth and so did Kim. He was easy to manage, like a puppy in a way, but I couldn't go too far. One day he would read my mind and he would have to find support. The slut on the other side of Herb played with her nips to make sure Herb hurried. I needlessly peeked under the table and then smiled at Kim. Poor Herb blushed red all over.

We went back to bed hoping that Herb had a chance to recharge his batteries. Kim stopped Herb from getting on the bed with her hand. She got me to lay on my back beside her. "It's your turn, Piper."



"I'm not on the pill and nobody has ever stuck anything up there but fingers and tongue."

"Today I'm going to be the big sister. You know that Herb is the one."

"Yes, I guess."

"No guess. He's the one."



More publicly, Kim said, "Herb, it's about time you greeted the woman that will give you the other half of your children. Do it properly. I love my sister."

I picked my knees up so he could see what he would be getting and he swallowed saliva once more.

He looked at me and said, "Do you want this, Honey? We can wait until you get older if you want?"

"I've been looking for you for years but didn't know what I was searching for. I don't want to wait any longer."

"Then I hope I'm at least half the man you think I am."

With that he crawled onto the bed. I saw his cock sticking out from his body. Nothing that large had gone into my vagina before. I knew it was going to hurt but I remembered the pain Kim was stoically carrying.

Herb must have seen my fear and slid beside me and then gently kissed my lips. Just the touch thrilled me. His scent came stronger and this made me groan. It was so sweet, so intoxicating. The lips had not left mine but slid across my cheek and eventually down my neck. I bared my jugular like a dog did to a superior member of the pack. It hurt to lose that position, but I knew Herb would be my superior—my leader.



-------

Chapter 7


My cock was so hard that it hurt. I had this pretty — no, beautiful woman child beside me. She was so pushy sometimes but I loved her for it. Even the term love was odd. How could I love her? She came into my life like a tornado just hours ago. She's so young. She claimed she was fourteen but she looked at least one or even two years younger. Her pussy still had fine hair on it that hadn't gone coarse yet. Her breasts were small like a girl's. Her eyes, though, were older than me.

When I kissed her sweet lips I felt a shiver go through me. The same thing had happened earlier when I kissed her sister, Kimberley. It was almost like they were witches. They had enchanted me somehow and I had no power to deny them anything.

They wanted my babies. How in hell would young girls like this know anything of having or rearing children? Then it came back to their eyes. They could see right into my soul. I wasn't sure if it was my glands doing the thinking or something else. It sure wasn't my brain. I was controlled by a force greater than me and I didn't even have the conviction to fight it. We men are such poor creatures. We fight and posture but most of us have such simple drives.

The child moved and bared her neck to me as if allowing me to take her life if I chose. Somehow I knew that she gave herself to me unstintingly yet there was a power there that could explode into violence. She killed more than one when we first met and she had probably killed before. She was like a beautiful idol filled with nitro. I could posses it but there were rules I had to live by if I wished to survive. I would have to live with the rules because I couldn't live without these two. They completed me in some odd way that I had never seen, heard, or felt before.

The neck was still in front of me as an offering. It was somehow even more significant. I kissed slowly across from the carotid artery, past the throat and to the other artery. On the way back I had to open my mouth wide and put my teeth around as much of her throat as I could reach and let her feel my teeth. She shivered at this touch and pushed her neck up higher. I could have her life if I wished. She would freely give it to me.

The gift was worth far more than I was worth. I pulled back and gave little kisses where my teeth had touched. She relaxed now as if she knew that her gift was found pleasing. She wanted me to continue because she had other gifts to give me.

I worked quicker than I wanted because she was anxious but something within me also told me to hold off and make her crave me more. I got to her small chest and she flexed her spine to give me two more prizes, I had to sample them. The nipple was small to fit the breast. At first touch it was like triggering a trap. Her arms came up and enveloped my head as if I thought to escape. With my lips trapped, I used my hand to tweak the other breast and finally her nipple.

She arched her back violently now and I heard her harsh breathing. I licked, bit, and pinched as she went wild. My bottle of nitro exploded and she pushed her thoughts violently into my mind. The thoughts were without conscious words. They were simply pieces of her needs and wants that she showed me. The strongest was for a girl baby that somehow looked like Jess, but a nicer, kinder Jess.

When she calmed down she released my head that she had held prisoner. Her soft skin and delicate scent told me to get her next gift. Her abdomen was like a child's. It was so soft and flat. I wanted to keep her this way always but I knew that one day her abdomen would swell.

I moved further and felt her down covered skin on my rough face. This was another gift that I had to lick and savour. Her hands came to my scalp and held me cruelly. I continued to where she wanted me and this was lower.

My lips came to the fringe of her longer hair and she moved me around the periphery then across the top. I was able to shift my body but suffered some pain as I plunged my tongue into her cleft. This must have been the secret word because she released me and lifted up one leg. I moved a bit and her other leg came up. Her knees were up to her chin and she was offering me one more gift.

I could smell a cinnamon like odour that I loved immediately. No other woman had smelt like this except her sister. I managed to look at her eyes and I saw hunger to match my own. She wanted me even though I was almost twice as old as she was. I would give her what she wished tonight if it was within my power to give.

Moving close to my target was easy. Doing it slowly was like offering water to a man dying of thirst. I had to plunge in. Piper's hands came back to my hair but I didn't care. The taste was light but the cinnamon was still there. I licked it up and more appeared. I dove my tongue in and she almost pulled my scalp from my head as she screamed and screamed. My head hurt from the intensity. It wasn't my ears that hurt but my mind because the scream had resonated within my head.

Liquid gushed out and I ignored the pain and sucked it up encouraging Piper to continue. Her pussy throbbed with some type of power and at each contraction more of her essence came out.

I must have rubbed her tender pussy raw. She was deeply sated I knew and I was proud that I had done this to her. When she opened her eyes to look at me it was as if a spark ignited gasoline. Her eyes suddenly burned with an ethereal light.

In my mind I heard, "I'm ready for you now. Take me."

I was erect and ready. I was also wet. Somehow I had spewed my seed over the bed instead of where it belonged. I moved forward and looked down into her eyes. They still burnt with the same internal fire her sister had.

There was no need to ask if I should continue. I would be consumed if I didn't but I would be consumed if I did. Piper flexed her abdomen to give me a good angle.

Kim slid down the bed. I knew the movement must be painful. When she was close she held me and I moved forward. There was still lots of lubricant and saliva there. She moved me around to coat my head though there was already semen there.

Kim said, "Push in slowly. Piper isn't very big."

I did as she asked. Piper was tight, so tight. I looked into Piper's eyes and saw them close. A smile on her face told me what I wanted to know.

My hips made short movements as the head of my cock was swallowed time after time. When I pushed in further, there was some type of obstruction that only part of my cockhead went through. I continued to thrust. She was giving me another gift and I had not even known it.

My rational mind tried to take over but it was outvoted. I had to continue and the best way was a short swift jab. I held this information from her until I suddenly pushed then froze.

Piper's eyes had come suddenly open. The fire had dimmed but as I watched I saw it start to rise again.

When I heard, "Push in," I was ready and pushed slowly. The more I pushed the more the fire inside her consumed me. I was pushing back and forth rapidly and I heard her cries to make me do more. I wanted desperately to flush her womb with my seed but she hadn't come yet. It was difficult but when I thought that this would please my little angel I managed. Her flesh gripped me tightly as if she wanted what I had to give and was reluctant to let me go.

I was looking down at my woman child when her eyes flashed open. I felt her orgasm approaching. It would be so much stronger than mine had ever been. I could feel my cock dimly but I could also feel my cock within my cunt. The sensations were strong — so strong. I had to hold out for just a bit more. It was like racing up a hill with a powerful dirt bike. When we reached the summit we were airborne.

The pain of her nails digging into my arms and then scratching my sides allowed me to hold off just a few thrusts more before I went past my own summit. I spurted into her womb and she tried to get her tiny legs around me but they didn't reach. I thrust into her just as vigorously as before and I heard the scream. This one hurt my ears and then my head until it was abruptly cut off.

I looked down. My angel was breathing rapidly. I used a hand to gently turn her face to me and I opened a lid. She was unconscious.

Beside me Kim was playing with her pussy. She said, "She conked out. We both had an orgasm at the same time."

"How do you know?"

"Herb, I'm one of your wives. Piper and I were wishing with all our might to get pregnant. It wasn't exactly our fertile time but it seemed as if we could make it that way. I can't hear you. Trust me enough to lower your shield. I wouldn't hurt you for the world."

"How do I do it?"

Nothing happened. I tried just like I did in the field and suddenly I heard, "I can see in but I'm not getting in. I want your other wife here to do this with us."

"It feels odd. Not about having two young and beautiful mates but you getting into my head."

"Think of ideas. It's a first step."

I tried to show how much I loved both of them when Piper awoke. "Hello, Husband. It's nice to have you parked where you are but we must feed you."

"I just ate a meal."

Piper used her hand to keep her opening closed and said, "Move closer, Kim."

The older sister did as she was asked. Piper walked on her knees and then quickly straddled Kim's face and sat down. And expression of bliss came over her and I felt it too. In a moment she said, "You better get down there and eat to your heart's content. This slut of ours is good for the long haul."

The idea sounded good and I somehow knew that they weren't pushing as hard to get into my mind as they had been. I thought to them, "Do the two of you know that I love you?"

From the two of them I heard, "We know. Soon you will know too."

That night was painful and satisfying. It was also tiring and glorious. I ate pussy all the time. While they thought I was mother cat feeding her kittens with my one teat. When I couldn't get it up anymore I was still used as a vagina vacuum. I didn't bitch in the least. I knew for a fact that my girls loved me.

It was only when I had to sleep that Piper said, "The drug Kim takes travels through her body. Some of it is secreted in her saliva, urine, and vaginal discharges. I have never taken the drug directly but this way has helped me develop slowly and become very powerful. Kim had some issues and took the drug directly at a later time. She became the strongest."

"So how exactly did you get it?"

"There are twelve other humans like me. I suck on a lot of clits and cocks. Bobby is young and I do him to show him he's part of the pack. Joy isn't much older and she's starting to develop a discharge of her own."

I was excited and I guess they read this but I didn't care. "What will my place be in the pack? I somehow know I have to be there."



"I don't know exactly. You're our husband but you can only be the leader if you warrant the post. This means you have to take the drug and grow powerful mentally. If you aren't strong or ethical enough I will still lead."

"Will I have to participate in the orgies?"

"Have to? No, but the pack will be stronger if you do. The four older boys were male prostitutes. They still fuck each other and Bobby. They fuck Joy and the rest of us but they didn't get my vagina. That I saved for you. Bobby fucks any hole that is not tenanted already."

"You took a peek inside my head. Does it bother you that I'd like to do things with others?"

"Inside the pack is ok. Joy and Bobby will love to ride you. Missy loves her boys and she'll take time to love you too."

"What — what if I fall in love with them?"

"You will, but not as deeply as you love us."

"Do you have some of this drug for me?"

"We have a little but we want you to get it second hand for a while. It makes you stronger somehow. We believe that if you become accustomed to the drug you won't suffer any of the detrimental effects you would by taking the drug in pill form."

"Why haven't you taken it this way yet?"

"I'm the leader and I'm the most cautious. We are still studying Kim. One day soon I'll take the drug like she does. We have more to say in the morning and you better get some sleep. Kim and I will be making some more milk for you."



My deflated dick gave a twitch but that was all. We just cuddled together on the bed and slept.

I woke up early the next morning after only a few hours sleep. I looked down at the pair of beauties in my bed and felt like the luckiest man in the world. Part of the feeling was from the sex I had and will have but the vast majority was love. I didn't know how I could look on two young ladies and see them both as my mates. I had never given up on having children but the right lady never came around. Now I had two of them.

Work had to be phoned and I gave my apologies for not making it in to Dr Vale's office. I was a physician's assistant. A PA did most of the grunt work that a doctor did and we even diagnosed. In some cases I referred the patient to Dr Vale.

I was a fireman and a paramedic. That meant I on-call and might have to run to an accident. In some cases I had to put out fires. The money was better as a fireman but I loved to play doctor too.

I set the timer on the coffee pot and had a quick shower. I smelt of pussy and loved it. When I got up, I made sure I shaved as close as possible. Usually at this time I played with the old dick but I needed all I had for later.

When I tried to sneak back into bed I saw two pair of eyes staring at me. Instead of jumping to conclusions and jumping the girls I stopped and relaxed. It was hard to lower the block even though I never knew I had it before yesterday.

I heard, "Good morning, Husband," in unison.

I thought of my answer but they would have to pluck it from my mind. "Good morning my beautiful ladies. You make me the happiest man on the face of this earth."

Kim said, "I see you shaved and saved something for us."

I was concerned about jerking off in the shower but I had to rationalise it against what they already knew about me and still loved me.

Piper said, "We do love you. It's like you fit perfectly into me and part of you fits perfectly into Kim. The two of us can share and we also love each other."

"I'm pleased to hear that. What might you ladies like to do today?"

"The same thing you're thinking about. Girls really aren't that much different. We like to fuck as much as guys."

This was a little odd coming from the pretty mouth of my younger wife but I loved her for it. She was crude and direct sometimes. This was a good thing.

"I'm smart, too, and possibly pregnant with our first child."

This made me excited and not sexually. Kim said, "I have to pee and I need a big strong man to take me to the bathroom and wipe my cunny after."

I said, "You really know what buttons to push, don't you?"

Kim said, "Of course. I have to get you into shape."

Kim felt like nothing when I picked her up. I loved the feeling of her skin against mine but only kissed her as I walked. From somewhere I was directed the right way to go so I didn't have to look where I was going. Kim was seated and she had a chance to smile as I heard the tinkle in the toilet. My woman was not shy.

When the tinkle stopped she gave a delightful little shiver and smiled at me. I got some tissue and bent down. I could smell urine and some prime cunt. Kim wiggled forward as far as she could and then leaned back. Her legs were as far open as they could be in invitation. I didn't have to be asked twice to this banquet.

Kim held my head and tried to get more of her into my mouth. In a moment I felt her wounded leg being picked up and gently placed on my back. Moments later I felt a warm wet opening swallow me.

I tried to keep my block down to let my angels know how I felt, especially at a time like this. They responded by letting me feel how good it was to suck on the old schlong. A moment later I felt how good it felt to get my clit sucked by a person that loved me.

Kim and I didn't last long. Everybody seemed happy. I sat Kim at the table and got Piper. She didn't go on the chair but I put her on the table like the main course and began to feast on her. I tasted a little dried blood so I knew she would be sore here or at least inside.

When I looked up I saw Kim resting on the table and sucking on one of her sister's nipple while she pinched the other.

Kim sent, "Wet your finger and put into her bum. Your other slut likes that."

I didn't hear any naysayers so I used a finger and slipped it into her abused vagina and then carried some moisture to her anus. I went back and forth with Piper moving all over the place. My finger slipped in fairly easily as if she granted me another gift.

Piper sent, "Fuck the gift." When I took this the wrong way she said, "Stick that cock up my butt. I'm not a virgin there."

"Hold her legs, I need some butter." Kim heard me because she did as I asked.

I got the butter and used a clean finger to put a lot on Piper's bum and worked my finger back in. My mind was suddenly filled with what she felt and I was happy to be doing this for her.

Using the back door was fun but few women that I knew claimed to like it. I knew that Piper was one that did. When she was stretched enough I put the real thing into place. I was very slow but soon it was Piper that was urging me on. Her flesh clung to me tighter than anything except her vagina. She groaned in pleasure and held her sister's head tightly to her breast.

"Faster, honey. I need it."

There was no way I was going to go fast. She was still tight and I would rather cut off my arm than harm her. I felt something near my pelvis and found Kim's hand playing with Piper's clit. With Piper's urging and my own instincts I picked up speed but then slowed a bit. I was going to have at least sixty years of pounding my two loves and there was no sense wearing anything out now.

Piper was flooding my mind with what she felt and I had to put up my block or I would shoot. With her mind absent, it felt like I was alone in the world and tried to find some halfway point.

When I found the mechanism it was like finding my wives all over again. This time though I only had to contend with the sensations coming to me from my own anatomy. Even this was too much and I knew I was on the home stretch. Kim worked faster and I opened the gates wide to let them in. I felt myself and I felt my clit ready to explode and I felt something large and wonderful in my bowels.

It was the bite to the nipple that set us all off. I had to hold tight to Piper so she wouldn't hurt herself and another hand went to Kim to make sure she was steady. I shot spurt after spurt into Piper and the only regret was that it wasn't into her womb.

When I recovered I found that the last thought was Piper's. It felt like mine. Maybe one day we would be a multi part fucking machine where we felt everything everyone else felt.

I spent the morning cleaning my girls and making their meals. With the three of us staying naked there were lots of touchy-feelies. Piper went outside to feed Baron and then she undid his collar. He ran around enjoying his freedom but soon settled down. He did this for me too but soon took off as if this area were not his territory.

My naked girl came in with a smile and found me pleasing Kim and sucking up all the drug she had to give me. I had a low level headache and Kim had assured me that everything was as it should be.

Piper said, "You guys going to fuck all day?"

Kim said, "Sure."

"You're a slut."

"And you're jealous. Come here and sit on my face and momma will take care of you."

They both stopped moving almost instantly. I felt a surge of danger. Kim said, "Your grandmother. She has problems with circulation. She wants a massage. She likes your hands and your body too."

"Shit. What am I going to say?"

"Take Kim to the bed. Open the windows. Dump some perfume or cologne. Get dressed and do up your fly. You took us in because we had nowhere to turn."

Kim was put in bed and Piper put a bra and blouse on her. Then covered her up. You would only know she was naked if you looked underneath.

I got my pants on and Piper opened the windows more. She found some perfume and dumped it.

Piper was the last to get dressed and she paraded around me long enough that I forgot about any problem with Grandma Ellen. The little brain overruled the larger one again and I relaxed.

Ellen pulled up a lot later than I thought. The girls must have found her thinking of me when she was kilometres from the house. Piper raced out the door before I could. I heard her commanding Baron and the dog did what he was told.

Piper opened the car door and held Ellen's purse. They were talking but I didn't hear any of it. Grandma got out of the car and actually patted Baron's head. He wasn't vicious just stupid.

While the girls talked I turned on a fan to drive the smell of perfume out a window. A kettle went on next and on impulse I brought down the good china. It was at least five minutes later that they came in and I was pouring boiling water into the scalded pot.

I finished pouring and went over to grandma and gave her a hug and a kiss. "Hi Grandma. Why don't you sit down and have some tea?"

"I'd like to but I heard you have an injured young lady here in your bed."

I was not getting any cues from the girls so I said, "Kimberley hurt her leg and she doesn't want to go to the hospital."

"I'd like to meet the girl."

Kim better be decent or our marriage was going to get off to a rocky start. "This way Grandma."

The bedroom door was open and Kim had a big smile. She was sitting up in bed reading one of my books that I had to study to get to be a PA.

It was Kim that said, "Hello and welcome to my temporary abode."

Ellen was flustered. This was a person's room now and they deserved some privacy even if the door was open. "Hello Kimberly. My name is Ellen. I'm sorry for bursting in here like this. I thought you would be unconscious with intravenous dripping into your veins."

"It hurts but it's bearable."

"What happened to you?"

"Telling you is dangerous to all four of us. Think of one of those thrillers you read. Somebody says only one word out of place and people die."

"That's only in novels, Dear."

"Do you honestly think that?"

"Yes, what else can it be?"

"So governments are always proper and there are never hit teams sent out? People in crime file strongly worded protests to their enemies? Large corporations with billions of dollars at stake will always take the high road and disclose their mistakes?"

Ellen was nonplussed and I didn't know what to say to stop this. Ellen then said, "Those things must happen but they would be rare."

"Do you think any of those groups would publicise what they have done? We only hear of the times when the facts can't be hidden any longer. Many times it's an opponent that brings the dirt to the surface. Business and government treat us like mushrooms."

Ellen did not respond to the rest of the saying. "I will concede that you may have had a traumatic experience that I would only find in a novel or the newspapers."

"Will you also acknowledge that a misplaced word could kill any of us in this room?"

There was a lot more thought. I wish I could read minds like the girls. Life would be so much easier.

Ellen said, "I will not say anything to anybody and I will not talk of this over the telephone."

"A wise choice. First of all, I can't go into detail. I can only provide some framework and something you would not believe."

I said, "Are you sure about this? We can get into a lot of trouble."

Piper said, "Grandma Ellen is not that squeamish and above all she's a realist."

I must have mentally capitulated because Kim said, "My sister and I live in a commune composed of a few individuals with extremely high intelligence. We are self-sufficient. Two groups of people wish to take advantage of us and use our abilities to advance themselves. Some of this is to acquire the money we have accumulated since our group started. The figure reaches many millions of dollars. I cannot answer any more questions about our commune. Are you with me so far?"

"Why, yes. People wish to exploit you and your commune."

"That's it. We are hesitant to become enmeshed with these groups and go so far as to protect ourselves. We learn unarmed combat and the use of various weapons."

"I would protect myself too if I were in your shoes."

Kim smiled and said, "It's so nice to find a kindred spirit. We have in the past shot out the tires of cars trying to trap us. Recently they have become even more insistent. Yesterday a helicopter was leading three teams of men to trap us. We shot the machine and it landed without crashing near here."

"My god! How can you say that so calmly? I would curl into a ball if that happened."

"I doubt that very much. Later in the chase a car raced down a road closed to traffic. We were on the narrow bridge at the time. We fired at the driver and killed her."

"A woman? She was trying to kill you?"

"She was trying to capture us. In her trunk was an AK-74 and an automatic pistol. She must have had some other weapons with her where she sat in the car."

"This is too fantastic to believe."

"Your grandson saw what had happened while he was out hunting. Please ask him."

Ellen turned to me. The expression on her face said, 'don't tell me this is true.' I had to say, "I saw the fight from a rise. I had to use my binoculars. I then saw two people with assault rifles shoot at the three young ladies."

"Three? Where is the other?"

"Grandma, she was shot but not dead yet."

"My god! This is a job for the police."

"It could be but the people we are dealing with are very wealthy and intelligent. The police would act in good faith and the two survivors would be taken away."

"This is horrible."

Kim said, "It gets worse."

"How?"

"Piper and I ran with what we could carry. Jess stayed behind and when they approached her she attacked. She killed two men and wounded two more before she was killed herself."

Ellen was quiet for a long time trying to digest what she was told. Finally she said, "I know that there's more."

"Two men were closing in on us. We were just too tired to fight back effectively. When one man aimed his gun at my sister's head from only a few metres away, he was shot by a brave man using a bow and arrow. He saved both of our lives."

Ellen immediately looked at me. I didn't say anything. She finally said, "You killed a man?"

"Yes."

Ellen took her time to understand this and probably go over the ramifications to me and the family.

"There was no report of any of this in the papers or the radio."

Kim said, "The groups chasing us are wealthy. They don't want the waters stirred up any more than necessary. They will take away the vehicles as well as the bodies, including Jess'."

"This is horrible."

"It is, but think what it would be like if they found our commune."

Ellen spent five minutes thinking about all of this then said, "Can you get back to your people?"

"Yes, in time. We gave then the slip but they will be back."

"I can drive you there."

"That would be a breach of our security but thank you for the offer."

Ellen thought even more and said, "There is more, isn't there?"

"Oh, much more. The part you will not believe is that we came through Orillia a while ago. We were being chased at the time by the same people. There was an accident ahead of us. An ambulance raced by, going to the hospital. Piper and I felt something coming from the ambulance. It was like we found a piece to a puzzle that fit us perfectly. It was love at first sight even though we couldn't see the person. We could only feel him."

Ellen gave me a quick look and then back to Kim. Kim said, "Many weeks later we came back to Orillia to find that person. Piper and I were plagued by the same dreams of a man that would protect and love us. He would be the father of our children."

Ellen gave me the look again.

"We searched the city for nine days trying to detect that feeling. The enemy had found us and were closing in. We had to flee or die. Now comes the other part of the story I told you. What is odd is that we found our mate. When we were going to be caught we hid in a culvert and he shot an arrow from a great distance and wounded one man. The rest gave chase and we were able to escape."

Ellen said, "You're talking about Herb, my grandson?"

"Yes. Somehow he completes us. We are a family now."

"But you're so young?"

"I see your intelligence has failed you."

"What?"

"You heard me. How old were you when you were married?"

"That's different!"

"How?"

"Those times were different."

"That's a poor excuse and you use a double standard you don't like to see others use."

Ellen looked at me now and said, "How do you feel about this? They're young. And there's two of them."

"Don't ask me. They came charging into my life. When I see them I know that either of them is what I was looking for all my life and now there are two."

"What are people going to say?"

"There is more of your double standard. You talked to me so many times about leading my own life. You were the outgoing one and now you've gotten old and want everything to be predictable. You're thinking like the old woman you claimed you hated before. I might also point out that there are many families with more than two adults in them. Some groups are in this city. Do you actually think this is so rare?"

"I don't want you hurt."

"Life and pain go together. We can't escape that. Marriage is pain, joy and boredom but at least my mates and I fit together more than most people ever dream of."

"What about those people trying to kill you?"

"I don't know enough yet to make plans."

"Do they know that it's you that killed that man?"

"No."

"How many bow hunters are there in this area?"

"That's a good question, Grandma. I think around fifty. I can see where you're going with this. Not all of us are in clubs. They'll get a list of members and see who are the likely candidates."

"They'll come here and see if the girls are here to find out if you're the one that fought them."

"That makes sense."

Piper said, "We're not leaving here without you."

Ellen looked at the girl closely. Piper's voice said there would be no discussion on this topic.

Ellen looked worried and asked me, "What about your work? People depend upon you."

"If grandpa had to go, would you go with him?"

"That's different."

"How?"

"We weren't chased by people like that."

"You're talking around the subject. Would you go with him?"

She reluctantly said, "I could wait until he called me."

"They're looking for all three of us and my family comes before my job."

"When do you have to go? Will I be able to call you?"

The girls left this to me and I said, "I think it has to be in a few days. Kim still has a bullet hole in her leg."

Ellen's face changed as if what we said couldn't be true but now she was hearing evidence. I heard a noise and looked. Kim threw back the covers on the bed to show the bandage with some dark red seepage in the depths of it.

Ellen hurried over and even got to her knees to see the wound better. She had been a nurse before she retired. She said, "What medications have you been taking?"

"None. I can encapsulate some pain."

"When was the bandage last changed?"

"Our husband changed it this morning."

I saw Ellen's nostrils flare a few times and she looked at me. It was Piper that said, "Kim and I are sexually active and have been for three years. We may not be oversexed but we do have our needs. Having a husband means we find relief within the family now."

"Are you on the pill?"

"As a matter of fact, I have a reaction to the pill so I'm careful what goes in the front end."

"You can get pregnant."

"That's what Kim and I were planning on." She must have read Ellen's mind because she then said, "Trapping Herb has nothing to do with it. He'll come because we have met, not because one or both of us are pregnant. No matter how smart we are, instinct plays a major role. We feel the need strongly to have children. Some of that is because of the stressful lives we lead but also because we finally met the man that is suitable to be the father of our children."

While Ellen was thinking, Kim said to Herb, "Honey, I have to pee. Can you give me a lift?"

"Sure."

I went around the bed and carefully picked Kim up. Kim groaned in pain and Ellen reached out to cradle the wounded leg. The three of us seated Kim on the toilet and the girl began to do her business. I waited until Ellen tried to get around me. "Are you going to stay here and watch?"

I hadn't thought of this. Kim said, "I'm not shy and it makes me feel safe to have Herb close. If I start making some obnoxious noises, I know it's natural. If it smells too much he can run for the hills but our children will stink a lot worse."

Ellen said as she got around me, "That may be true but I have to live with the way I was raised."

"That's ok but its fun to have my husband wipe my bum and dry me off in front. Men are all perverts but so are women."

"How do you know that? You're so young."

"I went to a private school where everyone in it was a lesbian. It was a sanctuary for us. I was sucked and fucked with some amazing toys."

Ellen's face was even more unbelieving than when she heard that I had just killed somebody.

Kim went on, "Piper was the only one that managed to stay away from the girls, teachers, staff, security and the head mistress. I didn't but it was still fun."

I had no idea why this information was coming out now or what it might accomplish. Ellen was just floored with the data. I took her hand and led her out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. I seated her in a chair and poured her a cup of tea then raced back to Kim. I got a passionate kiss and cleaned up my wife.

Kim had me take her to the kitchen and she sat on one chair with her wounded leg up on another. Piper had poured three more cups and then found the sugar and lemon. Kim looked to feel right at home even though she had nothing on below the waist.

Ellen said to Kim, "Aren't you cold, Dear?"

"Herb likes me naked," and there was a small gasp. "I like to be naked to remind him that I'm here."

"I doubt very much if he will forget."

"I do too, men are such uncomplicated creatures. Tell Piper and I about the family we're joining. We want the juicy gossip. That's the best. Then tell us about our man."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, if it's too delicate for Herb to hear we can send him out to walk Baron or something."

Ellen looked at me and when she saw my face she started to laugh. "Well, his father was quite the man about town —"

The family skeletons were taken out of the closet and dusted off. Some had to be exhumed because I didn't know about them. I was getting red when I was mentioned from time to time. I thought it prudent to walk Baron but I had to stay to support my family if not my honour.

Kim and Piper talked about their own home life and even mentioned exactly why they were on their own. My surprise was that Ellen was very sympathetic.

They talked about Jess and the conversation got very subdued. When Ellen heard Nicki's name, her hands clutched the table. Nicki's past came to light and then her death. Ellen did not find out the particulars because the girls refused to give them.

Jess' personality was given, even some of the not so nice things but mostly they concentrated on what they wanted to remember about her. The fact that she was good at cunnilingus and liked to have one of the younger boys poke her bum was also part of the description.

Ellen said breathlessly, "It sounds like there is no adult supervision."

Kim said, "The members of our group have a minimum IQ of a hundred and fifty. I think that Piper's IQ is close to if not over two hundred. One of the young men has an IQ like mine but has something extra. Nicolas displays extra brilliance in one specific area. He is the only person to beat Piper in mathematics. We can only guess but his IQ is off the charts in this area. He now takes care of our finances. Piper brought in fifteen percent per year but Nicolas is doing around twenty two percent and he just started. We have no need for funds to support our family."

"What about adult guidance?"

"There are very few adults that can guide us. We are all young and more prone to follow the dictates of our hormones but Piper is the leader. She has a level head and we follow simply because she's usually right."

In a moment Ellen said, "I see how adults are not needed but it must be lonely?"

"It is always lonely when you have minds like ours. Herb will fit in very well. The youngsters will see him as an adult and be comforted though they have reason to distrust all adults."

"Why is that, Dear?"

"Four of the boys were male prostitutes. They were born homosexual. The other children were sold to support the drug habits of their mothers. Two were prostitutes and sold by their pimps."

"I can't see how this commune functions."

"It functions very well. If our troubles ever end you could be asked to visit or perhaps we can come here."

"If Piper is so smart, why is she not talking to us?"

Piper said, "I look younger than I am. My voice is that of a little girl. Adults tend to unconsciously respect the word of a person that looks more grown up." She gave a smile and said, "And Kim likes to talk a lot."

Kim gave her the eye and I was sure there was some communications going on that we could not detect.

Ellen saw this and quickly said to get off the subject, "Are the four boys — still homosexual?"

Piper this time said, "They were born that way and will stay that way. They are not fully committed to their own gender. They have found that girls can be less threatening and provide companionship and even gratification. Girls we found are less bothered by stereotypical relationships within the group."

"I've met a few people that could use your insight but I doubt if they would consider it valid. I think this goes back to their perceptions of a young person."

"Exactly. You've diverted my older sister from chastising me and the conflict has been put aside until we choose to start it up again. This brings us to your visit. Is there something wrong? I noticed you walked with a list and you sat carefully."

"I didn't think you noticed. I have a sore back and poor circulation in my legs. I phoned Dr Vale and found that my favourite grandson had not gone to work. I thought he might need some help and he could give me a massage if he was able."

"He's kept that secret from us probably feeling he'll be compelled by nasty wives to perform that service on them."

Ellen smiled and said, "I doubt he will complain and neither will you."

Kim said, "I'd like to see how this is done. We can read about it on the net but words are not as good as a live demonstration. Would this bother you if we watched?"

"There is nothing to hide. I'd be happy to be the patient."

I said, "Well let's try it." I went to the linen closet and brought out a self inflating air mattress and threw it on the living room floor along with some hand towels. I went to get the oil that I used especially for the women I massaged. It smelt nice and I usually got lucky afterward. Kim was placed on a cushion on the floor because she didn't want the couch or a chair.

I saw Ellen look at Kim's bare legs and pubic hair then took off her blouse. She put it on the back of a chair. She accepted Piper's assistance to get to the floor and then she got on her side She still wore her skirts and I usually just pushed this up to get at her legs when she needed it.

The hardwood floor was hard on my knees and I used some of the towels to cushion the joints. I looked at Ellen's back and saw where it looked to be giving her problems. Some of her muscles were tensed up on one side.

Running my hands down her back while she was laying on her side, I felt some irregularities. I had to roll her on her back and put a fist on the floor under her spine. I put my other had on her abdomen her and gave a small sharp push.

"How does that feel?"

"Better."

I felt for more problems and did it three more times.

"How's that?"

"A lot better."

"Good, now on your tummy."

Ellen moved into the familiar position and I put some oil on my hands and rubbed them together. Ellen moved her own hair and I began to work on her muscles in her neck. She was tense and I had to work a while to get her to loosen up.

I was only part way down her back when I looked up. I was so shocked I stopped what I was doing. Kim was naked and laying on a large towel. If that was not enough, Piper had her top off. She wore no bra yet. She was sitting on her sister's rump and massaging her back the same way I was. Not only did I get a good view of Piper's breasts but Kim had her arms out in front of her and her and I could see the sides of her larger breasts. I got hard and forced myself to go back to work.

Every so often I just had to look at the girls. I was ruled by my glands and my lower brain but I fought it. I must have spent a long time on Ellen's back. She was groaning contentedly and she was watching everything the girls did.

When I got to her lower back, she pushed her skirt down so I could get lower. The thing was she also pushed her pink panties down. I did this area throughly as we both watched the girls. Piper was aroused with stiff nipples and even one of Kim's was showing as she shifted to one side. It was Kim's moaning that got to all of us.

When I moved down to Ellen's feet I found Ellen getting completely out of her skirt. Maybe Piper was right and I turned Ellen on. She almost threw the skirt away as if she hated it.

Before I started on one leg, she had moved the other further apart to give me more room. This also allowed me to see a wet spot on her panties and I got that unmistakable scent.

A quick glance at Piper showed that she was ahead of me. Kim had quieted somewhat but still had to moan. I found that I was imitating Piper instead of doing this the way I usually did. Ellen didn't seem adverse to this at all.

Piper moved up and Kim flexed her hips to give Piper the maximum freedom. Her groans had intensified. Piper had to ratchet it up one more level when she moved her own body closer to her sister. Kim's heal was just underneath Piper's pussy. She sat down on this and flexed her hands on Kim's beautiful butt.

Her hands caressed her sister like the lover she was. The skin would pull taut and move Kim's clit. At the same time her anus would be pulled.

Kim got more and more vocal and I knew what was happening. I was concerned about what Ellen might think of this. A part of me eagerly urged her on.

Kims explosion came and it looked like Pipers did too. Ellen was moving violently under my hands. I looked down to see that my hands had been massaging her butt the same way Piper had done to Kim.

I pulled my hands back quickly but Ellen was still moving in the throws of her own orgasm. I didn't know what to do. Hell, I made my grandmother orgasm.

When I looked at Piper she was using her hand and pushing her fingers into Kim. I spoke to her mentally then I had to go back an work to loser my block. It had been up when I was worried. "Piper! Piper!"

She looked at me with that hungry look and I said, "For god's sake, it's my grandmother not your group."

"Who do you think was urging us on? Your grandmother is a sexual animal. When she was young she was just like us. She wanted this badly."

"It will embarrass her later."

"Not as much as you think. If you opened your fly now, she'd gobble you up in a flash."

The only thing I could think to say was, "She's not part of the pack."

"Not my pack but she is part of yours."

Ellen started to come around and I asked, "What am I supposed to do now? What should I say to my Grandmother."

"Go to town and get a new pair of boots with a different tread pattern. Buy arrows that are different from the ones you used. Destroy your old ones. Look at the size of Kim's jeans and buy her a new pair. Find the fixings for a romantic dinner for four. Don't come to the house until we say it's alright."

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing that will hurt your pack or mine. You better go now."

I took a towel and wiped my hands and fled. As I left the house, I saw a now naked Piper sit near Ellen. I got hard but knew this place was not for me.

I took my time shopping. I didn't need new boots because I had an old pair. New boots would be suspicious too. There were a few things I bought for my wives but I had to watch myself. Part of the time I had to think of the meal. Some portions I could purchase because the pastries were homemade. Today was not my day for groceries but I got what I needed and more for my suddenly larger family.

When I drove down the road I lowered my shield and called Piper and Kim. At almost three kilometres away they said, "You can come in now but go slow. We have to clean up."

"What about Ellen?"

"She's ok with what happened. It was natural, like taking a dump."

I was not sure of that but I took their word for it. Baron greeted me nicely and I gave him a pet. I cleaned out his water dish and gave him some fresh water. It felt odd for him to be free and not running off somewhere.

My arms were full of groceries when I arrived. The girls were sitting at the table. This time all of them were dressed. I just smiled and went back out to get more.

When I got in, Piper said, "We made coffee for you."

"Thanks, honey." I suddenly looked at Ellen. She did not criticise me for the endearment she might think misplaced.

I began to clean potatoes until I was ordered to put the bag on the table and the women folk would clean them. A large roast went into a pressure cooker and I seared it with no lid. The girls read my mind and began to clean carrots. I could see how this could make a family function more efficiently and with less aggravation.

The groceries were put away as I worked on the small tasks. The ingredients were cooked in order so the final product had nothing overcooked. I sat beside Ellen so I wouldn't have to look at her and give myself away. Besides it was nice looking at two beauties across from me. I was semi hard when ever they were around and even when I was away.

After the desert, Kim said, "We did some serious talking when you were out."

"What about?" Serious to me was the girl's safety and then us staying together.

The two smiled. They had read my mind but it was nothing I was ashamed of. They were my life now.

Kim said, "You have to go to work tomorrow."

"What about you? You need care."

"I know a nurse that will take care of me just fine. We take all of our property with us and Baron."

"Why the dog?"

"If someone comes, the dog won't be hurt. They'll have an easier time breaking into the house."

"They could come tonight."

"Not until dark. They could come in the day time and just ask questions and try to see how you react. If you are really nervous, then you are their man."

"What are we going to do?"

"Ellen will take some of our stuff to her house when she goes. Later tonight you'll drive us there with the rest of the suitcases and our other stuff. You sleep alone tonight, Baby."

Ellen surprised me by saying, "Leave that tool alone. The girls need it fully charged." They laughed at the expression on my face.

Ellen and Piper cleaned up. I had no dishwasher. Kim wanted me to take her to bed and I knew it wasn't because she was tired. These two young ladies were going to kill me. If we lived until they reached thirty then I was a goner for sure. I had to smile then because my only possible salvation was to keep them pregnant.

The two girls in question looked at me piercingly then Kim smiled. She liked the idea.

When we finished the cleanup, we unpacked everything. The girls had an armoury with them. They even had two frags. The AK-74 was a good weapon. It was a downer though when Kim and Piper went over the weapons and filled in the details. The pin and handle from a missing grenade was given to Ellen for some reason and she clutched them like gold.

The girls cried buckets and Ellen cried with them. I guess I did too.

Soon the story was cut short and Piper was the no nonsense leader that packed the cases. I was the one that took them to Ellen's car. Just before Ellen left, she kissed the girls like lovers then kissed me the same way. I didn't understand this at all. The rest of the clothing was packed and only the clothes were put in the truck. The girls were not going to be far from their weapons.

I asked, "What happened here today?"

Kim said, "We will not tell a secret but when you learn to read our minds you will find out."

"Will there be more of whatever it is tomorrow?"

Piper asked, "Are you jealous, Husband? There's no reason for you to be. All my children will be yours and yours alone."

Kim added, "You will find when you learn to read minds that jealousy is something you can dispense with. You know our needs and your own. You are going to be squirting into little Joy's pussy as you will with all the rest. You know their needs and they will know yours."

"I believe but I'll have to experience it to believe it deep down."

Kim said, "Well, I've got something for you so you can start on your journey. You better eat it up because in three hours, you're going on a diet."

"You're a cruel women."

"All women have a cruel streak. In some, it's not buried deep at all."

I was placed on my back and Piper helped Kim to get in position over my mouth so I got all her liquids. While the two of us were occupied, Piper went down on me.

My position stayed the same and the girls rotated. My tongue and lips were sore but the girls fed me their thoughts as well as their pussy. This helped even when I was running on empty.

We had a quick shower with little water and got dressed. Then we walked through the house and looked for any evidence of two wood nymphs living with me. The sheets had to be washed and this was started before we left.

Piper said, "Honey, drive to the other end of the city. I need to make a phone call and I don't want it traced back to where we might be."

"Your pack?"

"Our pack."

"Ok."

In a few minutes Piper made her call. She said very little and much of it was in code phrases. Her cries and those of Kim hurt me as if a knife was plunged into my heart.

My own recollections of Jess softened and I saw a girl that tried harder than before. She also tried valiantly to save the lives of Kim and Piper. That alone put her firmly into my good book.

When the call finished, we drove around for a while. The girls trying to recover and also to search out threats.

The closer I drove to Ellen's home, the more I felt like I was losing what made me what I was. Kim was laying down on the seat and Piper was crouched on the floor. My mood must have been a downer for the girls because they cried too.

When we got to the house I pulled up as close to the side door as possible and Piper sneaked out. Baron jumped out of the back but stayed close as a true guard dog. I carried all the luggage, the bags of weapons, and food for Baron. The last trip I carried a more precious burden that had been on my front seat.

Inside the house I found the girls crying with Ellen. I joined in like a fucking sissy. It was Ellen that said, "They will be safe here. You can be together. You have to stay away for a few days. If you come here too much it will be a giveaway."

"You don't know how hard this is. It's like finding something I searched for all my life and having it snatched away from me."

"I know what you mean. When I was young my best friend died. At least you know you just have to be patient and you'll have what you want back."

When I drove home, I thought of hitting the bottle but I had work tomorrow and I had too many responsibilities to break down. The girls being away bothered me as well as the fact that they had sex with other women. It was not that I was against it but because Nicki had been that way and she had left and ripped a gaping hole in my heart when she went.



-------

Chapter 8


Ellen and I took Kim upstairs. I could levitate myself but it was difficult to pick something else up. I wasn't like Brandon.

Ellen put us into her bed and said, "You two will be more comfortable together. I'll sleep in the guest room." She was being polite as she wanted desperately to sleep with us.

Kim said as she held Ellen's hand, "Stay with us. I'll feel so much safer."

"But the bed isn't that big."

"We can fit if we're friendly."

Ellen smiled and kissed us both. She had to bend over to kiss me and I knew her nipples were erect.

It was already late and we busied ourselves getting naked and helping Kim undress. We noticed right off that there were some major changes.

Kim said, "I like the way you shaved. I like the little girl look."

Ellen blushed and said, "You said I was a little scratchy and its summer anyway."

Kim moved as well as she could and spread her legs. One knee came up easily and I helped with the other. Kim said to Ellen, "Well come here. I have something for you."

Ellen crawled on the bed rather quickly and started to nurse like a kitten. I opened our luggage and brought out one of the toys Jess liked and got behind Ellen. She knew what was going to happen and wiggled in anticipation.

The vibrator went in fairly easily. It had been more difficult this afternoon because she hadn't been fucked in a while. It was easy to integrate with her thoughts and move the vibrator where she liked it. When I turned it on she really loved it.

The two had a nice cum and I slowed down but didn't stop. Kim grabbed Ellen's hair and pulled her back to work like a recalcitrant horse. She started to suck and lick at what she figured was the nectar of life. She was a woman that could be happy with any gender but preferred males. When she found us it brought back the memories of her youth.

Kim and I weren't callous. We needed allies to survive and Ellen was one of the nice people that would help if asked. Ellen's body was old but so was Herb and we loved him. Both had young psyches in them. Both needed us as we needed both of them.

Ellen's body sagged a bit from age but some things could be fixed with a little exercise. Sex worked as a good incentive as well as the goal. Her mind was not really all that submissive but she fell into this way of thinking as a way to be less threatening to us. We could use this to encourage her to grow. When she entered her dominant streak, it would be fun for us and possibly the pack.

I pushed in and out to get Ellen the highest possible pleasure, but I also worked to counter this so she rose in successive peaks. The next one should be the one that put her over. She was quite juicy and I used the excess to lubricate her anus. She could feel this action and it inspired her to work harder.

My finger worried its way into her bowels a little at a time and Ellen responded voraciously in feeding from Kim's trough of life. In a minute my finger came out and my thumb entered. I could fit more fingers in but this would be saved for later.

Ellen responded even more. Kim held her lover's lips and tongue where she wanted, as both climbed that last slope. My thumb moved to its limits trying to find some area that was more stimulating than the others and had to settle with a massage of her spine from the inside. At the same time I used the vibrator on full, the way she liked it best as I hit her 'G' spot repeatedly.

Ellen started to scream. Kim was having her own cum linked to Ellen and effectively muffled her exclamation of joy. Ellen started to fall and I had to quickly abandon her openings and jump off the bed. I got to Ellen's side in time to keep her from falling on Kim's damaged leg. The woman was unresponsive to anything except the intense feelings that went from one end of her body and back. It was like a half filled bottle of water being gently rocked end to end.

Kim and I got Ellen onto her back and with a lot more difficulty I got Kim down to munch on Ellen. It was my turn now and I sat on the woman's mouth. It took a while for her to respond but she did, like a determined donkey doing its work so it could go back to the stable for a rest and something to eat.

I woke up in the morning to find Ellen freshly cleaned and now wearing a shear and sexy house coat. She was smiling at me, content to be quiet. Her mind said she was in love again and wondering what she did to deserve the two of us.

When I stretched, she stared at my breasts. I guess she recovered from last night quicker than I thought.

She said, "Good morning, darling. I hope you slept well. I certainly did."

"Good morning, Ellen. I hope we didn't wear anything out."

"Oh no! I feel the best I have in years."

"Good sex and love do that to a person."

"Do you really love me?"

"Love is a complicated word. I love the people in our commune. I love Kim and Herb. I love you also, but all of the loves are different. You're a kind, considerate and loving woman that I'm happy to know so intimately. We are being pursued and fear for our lives and freedom. I doubt if we can stay here for long."

Ellen looked sad to match her thoughts and said, "I realise that. I'm happy with the time I'm able to spend with the two of you."

"That will be just enough for Kim to heal so we can travel."

"Maybe I should have another look at the wound."

"Let's make breakfast first. The sleepyhead won't be up until noon."

I got up and Ellen's eyes followed me. I didn't mind this at all. She looked at me the way she looked at art work. I gave her a kiss then hurried to the bathroom. I emerged empty and clean and had to get filled.

Ellen had a farmer's breakfast ready for me. Staying naked kept Ellen interested and it was the way I liked to be. That slutty sister of mine liked to walk around in the buff too.

I ate some of the meal then loaded a tray with some orange juice and took it in to feed Kim. Kim woke up to a kiss and responded by thinking of sex right away. She would bend over for anybody.



"I would not. They have to be nice."

"You're such a whore."

"So? You don't want to sample me once in a while?"

"You are tasty and habit forming."

"I like the taste of you, too. Do you want to come close and park over my tongue?"

"Later, my pretty slut."



We fed our tramp and then took her in and washed her very well. Ellen had to make sure there was no soap up her snatch. The harlot even pulled back on the skin on her belly and peed upward only to fall down on her. We weren't into water sports but Ellen thought this was delightfully naughty and sexy. The two women were a match sometimes. They thought with their clits.

Kim was put back in bed and Ellen removed the bandages she had put on. "You're certainly healing quickly. It must be good sex and love."

It could be those reasons but I had been concentrating on Kim's wound when I could as was Kim herself. Tiffany had the talent that encouraged a person's body to heal faster. Nobody else had shown the same talent so far. It'd be great to have more like that.

I exercised and got Ellen to do some with me. She didn't claim to be too old because that would distance her from us. Kim exercised her arms while in bed. It wasn't great but it was better than staying still.

Ellen took Baron for a walk and then fed him. He was a well behaved dog now that he had found his pack. He had only run away before because he was lonely and wanted to find his pack leader. Herb was simply too busy to spend much time with the dog.

Kim had taken some of Herb's medical books and we both studied them. Most of the information we had already found on the net but reading it from a book seemed somehow more official.

We searched for the replacements that Knox would certainly send but so far we couldn't detect any. Carstairs and Colins would find recruits too. We could detect the feeling of menace from them but they didn't come close enough to read.

I could imagine Colins working hard trying to find out about the drug samples the Carstairs people had found. This brought me to what they did about Jess' body. It was just a piece of rotting flesh now but I was still attached to the thoughts that had been in that form. My thoughts effected Kim but she thought of Jess just as much as I did. We tried to put on a happy face but it was all a sham. To get off that sorrow I thought of Herb. This usually cheered me up.

Yesterday, after Herb left to shop for boots, Ellen had said to me, "What happened to Herb?"

Since Herb wouldn't be back for several hours there was time to let her know the truth. I wanted to soften it as much as possible. "He went out to shop and think." Ellen knew what about too. "He liked looking at Kim's and my boobs."

"You have a nice bosom. There's nothing wrong with it."

"Well, they are still small. Anyway I copied what he did to your back but he was too slow for us. I started on Kim's legs first. That man was looking at our bodies so much that he began to copy us instead of the other way around."

"I can see that happening. You both are beautiful young ladies."

"Thank you, Ellen. You're beautiful, too."

"I'm old and sag."

"We'll get that way. Anyway, this gimpy tramp started to get turned on when I was just giving her a massage."

Kim exploded, "Massage! You were sticking your fingers in my holes."

"I was trying to relax you. You are so inconsiderate at times. I don't know why I love you as much as I do."

"Because I make you so happy."

"Well, that's true. You have such a gentle tongue."

"You like my lips, too."

"You're right. Now getting back to our husband, the horny boy got all worked up and didn't know if he was coming or going. He was almost coming most of the time. His pants bulged. He watched my hands kneed this tramp's butt and he did the same thing to you. When we had our cum he ran away to think. Everything that happened in the house was natural. Everybody needs to take a dump once in a while and everybody needs to have a cum. He's just confused and we'll have to bring him around."

Ellen was worried. "So you saw that I had one too?"

"You had a good one. Herb would have wet his pants but we had him drained fairly well by that time. Kim was sitting on his lap with an important part of him inside her when you arrived."

"Oh my! I should have phoned."

"That's ok. He needed a break."

Ellen smiled, then giggled like a girl then laughed like a woman. "The poor boy. He went through a long spell with few chances to relieve himself then he finds himself with two beautiful young girls bent on making him their husband."

"We may be too much for him, especially when we get into our thirties."

"What are you going to do?" Her thoughts led to finding other lovers.

"Kim and I have each other. Tiffany had her first child just a few months ago. She enters into a lot of our sex play."

"Another woman?"

"Sure. A woman is so much more attuned to us and knows what to do to make it perfect."

"Isn't that cheating?"

"Our commune isn't that way. Herb will join us. The rest may want to have a taste of him. He's ours but not exclusively. Some of the others may want his children but all of ours will be his."

"That sounds like a wonderful way to live."

I got up and stretched. My clothes were on the floor and Ellen's eyes were on my body. When I caught her looking she was embarrassed.

Kim turned over on her back with some difficulty and pain. Her hands were caressing her beautiful breasts as she played with her nipples. She was behind me and I could only tell because of the way I was in her mind most of the time. Ellen's gaze shifted from me to my precious little harlot.

Ellen's breathing got faster and I could see she was getting more and more excited. When the time looked right I took the towel under Kim and pulled Kim around so Ellen could see up inside my sister. Kim spread her legs more and played with her clit. Kim loved how her display turned the older woman on.

When Ellen was ready, I dragged the towel with a lot of difficulty because my sister was fat. The little slut exploded at me and said in my mind, "I'm underweight for my size and you know it."

"You're still heavy."

"Get Ellen to pull."

I was close to Ellen now and I didn't want to step on her. I sat down near her shoulders and pulled Kim toward us.

"Help me, Ellen. She's heavy."

The woman didn't think twice and pulled Kim over. I urged her to make it even closer.

"Look at how raw her pussy is."

The slut opened herself up but didn't stop what she was doing. I said, "Did you ever eat pussy when you were younger?"

"Yes, when I was young."

"I'm tired of hauling her ashes."

This was an old term and Ellen knew what it meant. She looked at me. She desperately wanted to do this but was afraid. I got up and straddled Kims face. She started in on me right away and I returned the favour. In a moment I looked up and saw that Ellen had almost fainted because she wanted us so much.

I reached out with my hand and pulled Ellen's face close to mine and kissed her. The smell of Kim was strong. When we pulled apart I pushed her head down and she didn't resist.

She was slow at first but got more aroused as she remembered what she felt as a girl and young woman. I just sat up and concentrated on what Kim was doing to me as I pushed sexy thoughts into Ellen's head without her knowing how they got there.

I was horny again from the memory and the seduction yesterday. Ellen was a horny woman with deep needs. Perhaps the pack could give her what she needed without killing her in the process. Bobby and Joy would eat the woman up in no time.

I was getting off track and had to think of the present. I tried to go back to studying. The most important topic to learn about was Herb and his mental block. Kim and I had spent some time in his mind. We learned that he was a pervert like everybody else but he had morals. His block was a mystery though.

Kim tried to copy what Herb had done naturally as did I. We spent hours on this then had a light lunch. Ellen was happy and we were glad we had another ally.

She said, "What were you girls studying?"

Kim said, "I studied more about gun shot trauma. It keeps my mind off the pain."

"If you're hurting I could get some drugs."

"Thanks, but drugs are a last case scenario. It's better to let the mind deal with this."

"Like hypnosis?"

"A little. It's more like taking a more active role in the management of our own brains."

"I've heard of some marvellous things happening. Religious Yogis have been reported to lay on a bed of nails, immerse themselves in freezing water and some were even known to communicate with others with similar training."

I said, "Our commune has done some research into the way the mind works. We found that it can do some things that cannot be explained through the standard physics that we took in school."

"What have you found?" She was very interested like a woman who was captivated by a spiritualist or even a person talking about something they deeply believed in, such as religion.

"There are forces at play that we don't understand or even detect. Our universe is not just the three dimensions we see and feel but at least eleven more. Gravity is measured by its effect but not how it's propagated. We strongly believe that it is something that is manifested in a multi dimensional universe and we only see the effects it has on our dimensions."

"How does that effect us?"

"The human mind may be able to manipulate some of the forces on other dimensional planes so that gravity here can be negated. The human mind may also be able to manipulate forces so thought can be transferred for kilometres but nothing is detected in the electromagnetic spectrum. The method and energy transferred is unknown but it's one of our pet projects."

"Have you had any success?"

"Yes, but on a limited basis."

She was excited about the answer and didn't realise that I pushed my thoughts into her mind.

"Can you do this?"

"Yes, I can."

"Will you show me? I won't say anything to anybody on my honour."

"I know you wouldn't say anything or I would never let you know about the commune."

Her eyes opened wide and she started to stutter. Her thought process was the same. She finally got out in a whisper, "Your lips didn't move."

"Nope. Sometimes it might be good to pretend you are talking when you think. It makes the process work a lot smoother."

"But how can you do this? Nobody else can."

"Some of those that chase us can."

Her mind worked feverishly until she said, "They want the secret."

"No, they have the secret. They want to eliminate competition. The other team wants to learn the secret and a lot more. Those we fight think we are bright but basically ordinary people."

"Can I learn to do this?"

"You are on your way now. In a few days you will begin to hear strange thoughts in your head. In a few days more they will be clear enough for you to understand some of them. After a few weeks you will be able to read thoughts but the people have to be nearby."

"Why did you give this to me?"

"We felt Herb as we said. He fits us and we fit him. We are mated. Kim and I read your thoughts and know you are a good person no matter how much you think otherwise. Herb thought the same way but you have to believe me when I say that he's clean when it comes to being a human. You're much the same."

"If I can't presently read minds how come I can hear you?"

"I have to read your thoughts or hear your words. I then have to form my thoughts and push hard to get them into your skull. You may get this skill in a month or two."

"That's wonderful."

"It's also temporary."

She was shocked, "Temporary? Why?"

"Kim and I secrete a chemical in our urine, sweat, vaginal discharge, glandular discharges including saliva, mother's milk, and lubricating oils from the Bartholin's gland. There may be more but our laboratory is not that well equipped."

"So I have to — continue what I was doing to keep this ability?"

"Yes, and so does our husband."

"Ah — when did you start to read my mind and how deep can you go?"

"Don't get worried Ellen. You are our husband's favourite grandmother. He likes you and when he was a boy he wanted to stick his 'thing' into you more than once. Of course at that time a hole in a fence turned him on. I first picked you up when you were a few kilometres from Herb's place. I seem to work a bit better with him close to me. You were also thinking of him."

Ellen was very embarrassed and I quickly said, "Ellen, snap out of it. I have read many minds. Yours is not that bad. If you're lucky, you will get a chance to find out how true that is."

"So you knew I wanted to do nasty things to you?"

"Ellen, I wanted you to do those nasty things to me. I did some nasty things to you unless you forgot already."

"Oh, I didn't forget. Could I come with you when you go? I would do whatever you wanted."

"I was going to ask you anyway. You haven't progressed far and if you stopped now you would probably never hear another person's thoughts. If you choose to join the pack you will get a lot of fluids pumped into all of your openings. I have read your mind enough to know that you will think you have gone to heaven. There are two randy people in the pack. Their names are Bobby and Joy. They'll be attached to you like lamprey eels. You'll like the attention."

"What are they like?"

"I think it's better to let you meet them first. If you had internet service I could take you to a site that has a collection of their stories under a variety of names. The stories are not erotic but pornographic in nature. They write at the level of those that read the stories, not what they are capable of doing.

"Bobby excels in some abilities and one of them is his grasp of the English language. We all have specialties and he makes sure we are up on grammar. Our stories are also on the web."

"How can I get on the web?"

"It's better to forget it for now. I don't want to draw attention to us."

"I can't wait to meet Bobby and Joy and the rest of your commune."

We went over to where Kim was and we talked more of what the pack was like but major portions of data were withheld. We were still in danger and one of Knox' people may kill Ellen because she would know too much. What she knows now is only enough to get her committed.

Since Ellen was a retired nurse we explained a bit about healing. This was the only ability mentioned because the rest might frighten her until she had the chance to understand us better.

It was easier to concentrate on Kim's leg when it was hidden under a sheet. We may have made some minor improvements but we had no way to tell. As a change we tried working on the poor circulation in Ellen's legs. She claimed some improvements though I was in her mind and found none.

We talked openly about Herb's block and Ellen tried to give some suggestions.

The phone rang a few times and Ellen had to stay in character so she talked for half an hour each time. Our man was smart for a male and didn't phone though it hurt us. We missed him even though he wasn't very far away. Kim and I wanted to phone but that could be dangerous. Knox used high tech gadgets and espers. Carstairs used even more high tech gadgets found in the military.

That afternoon Ellen had two friends come over for a visit. They came separately and we hid upstairs and were quiet during each visit.

Ellen went out and bought the fixings for a nice supper. It was lonely that night. I wanted Herb beside me and in me. We three girls made do with what we had. Around one in the morning I got up and dressed in dark clothing. After checking for threats I took Baron out for a run. Part of this was for his benefit but more was for mine. I should know what the neighbourhood was like in case I had to leave quickly.

Baron came home tired. He was out of shape. I had gone into overdrive a bit for more exercise and to give Baron an excuse for stretching his legs. Baron thought more of the pack before he went to sleep and I did the same.

The next day was a copy of the previous one. We concentrated on pussy first to feed Ellen then worked on healing both Kim then Ellen. After that we discussed the block and tried some experiments.

Ellen walked Baron during the day and I ran with him that night. Kim was up and using crutches which all of us thought was a good idea except it indicated we would have to leave sooner.

The next day about noon we got a phone call. Ellen answered it. I got up quickly because I knew who it was. She handed me the phone and I said, "Hello, honey."

"Hello, snookums. I'm calling from a public phone. My house was entered yesterday when I was at work. They did a good job but not perfect. My boots and new arrows were moved. I had scuffed the arrows up to look used and I hope they passed muster."

"Anybody following you?"

"I have no idea. They'd have to be amateurs for me to catch them. They would probably just bug my truck."

"I know you go out to eat sometimes. Go to 'The Port' at six. We can talk then."

"They'll see you."

"You have two smart wives that know what they're doing. Get a booth where it's private."

"Ok. How are you and Kim doing?"

"We concentrate on the problem and the healing goes quicker. Your other wife is up on crutches. We study and have fun. I run at night with Baron when nobody's around. I think we can go in a few days. Have you given any thought of how you're going to leave?"

"It's going to be hard. I have a lot of commitments but my family is more important. I can put the house up for sale."

"A lawyer would be best and you can contact him after the sale. He has your power of attorney to sign the documents. If I can get to a safe computer I can put enough money in your to pay off the rest of your mortgage."

"I'm not used to this sort of thing. I wondered how you knew I had a mortgage."

"Your wives are smart and resourceful. Now I'm going to put your other wife on. Her panties got soaked waiting to talk to you."

"Tell her I'll suck them dry for her."

"I will, honey. Bye."

"Bye, love."

Before I handed the handset over I said, "Herb wants to suck your panties dry for you."

"He knows I need special care." She took the phone and said in a sickly sweet voice, "Hello, honey. How are you handling being celibate? If you were here right now I'd have you down my throat before you could say hello."

Ellen was shocked at the call and the language. While Kim spoke I told Ellen what had happened to Herb's home.

When Kim passed the phone to me I said my goodbyes and so did Ellen. Ellen said, "I guess I'll have to sell this home too."

"It's not necessary. You can keep it. Set up a system with a lawyer to take care of the house for you and even fill out your tax forms. It won't be safe to come back until I get the two forces to fight and kill each other off."

"Must they die?"

"There's very little hope for one group but some of the others may be salvageable."

Ellen called an attorney and started the process. Documents had to be prepared and signed. She would go tomorrow afternoon.

We practised healing even though we couldn't prove it had any effect. Ellen's legs gave her less pain but she was walking more now.

Later we snuck into Ellen's car and she drove towards the water front. Kim and I had our guns with us and were searching for threats. We parked away from the restaurant in the shade. If we stuck our heads up we could see Lake Couchiching.

When Ellen gave the all clear we sat up and let the cool air flow over us. We were quiet until we detected Herb coming. We told Ellen what we knew but waited for Herb to park before Kim said, "Hello, darling. Did you miss us?"

Herb was a little shocked and I sent a copy of what he felt to Ellen. He said, "I did more than you know."

Kim giggled and said, "Actually, we do know."

We both talked to him until he got a seat in the back of the restaurant. Kim said, "We had a heart to heart chat with Ellen. She knows that we can read minds."

He was concerned with the secret spreading but left the decision to us. The man was one in a million. "That's ok with me."

A man was approaching the restaurant and got a seat where he could watch Herb. This screwed up one plan but opened other possibilities. He was watching to see if Herb was meeting anybody. The radio transmitter showed the car was parked here.

Colins owned a large chunk of Stethbridge and could afford the fees Carstairs was charging for this investigation. More people were hired to do the grunt work but the mercenaries were the ones that would close in and capture us.

This man didn't know if the house or phone were bugged but there was a fair chance they were.

Carstairs had come personally to the city but we didn't know where he was. This meant that Knox would send people here to see what was happening. The city was going to heat up and it would be better to run before we were chased out.

I was worried. Kim wasn't yet ready to go. I didn't want to leave without Herb. Ellen wanted to go and I wanted her with us. One possible solution was to leave and have Herb follow later.

When Herb was eating, I said, "There are more people from Carstairs arriving in the city and Knox will be sending some. As much as I hate it I want to leave now and have you follow later."



"How am I going to find you?"

"That's the trouble. Your car is bugged and probably your home and phone. The espers will read your mind if you come to their notice. If you keep your block up they may see that as special too. Staying away from them is the best. With a block up we can't communicate this way."

"I have a cell phone."

"That might work but it will be monitored if they have a receiver. I happen to know the opposition has one. If you leave suddenly there will be a mad rush to track you."

"I can see that happening. What do you suggest?"

"If you go to your lawyer either Carstairs or Colins will try to find out what's happening. The best thing to do is abandon everything and leave by bus or train."

"Where do I go?"

"Go to Trudeau Airport in Montreal. There will be a message at the Air Canada desk for you."

"Is that going to work?"



I hated to lie to Herb but they could read his mind and get there before him. "Sure it will."

When we said goodbye, we cried and knew that Herb felt our pain.

We drove home really on the look out for espers. I wanted to leave the city right away but hard facts kept us around for another night. Ellen's car was small and not very dependable. We had a lot of things with us but we could dispense with everything but the weapons. Baron was another matter. He could be left for Herb or for another family member but I wanted him with us. Ellen would simply tell people that she was going to see a friend and the lawyer could be contacted later.

We discussed this in the house. Ellen said, "Jeff has a fairly new truck he has to get rid of. His wife is expecting their first child. The truck has four doors and could hold us and Baron."

"Herb's Cousin? The cop?"

"Yes."

"Well, you can phone and ask. We can feed you what you have to know."

She wasn't sure about this but did it anyway. We scanned through Ellen's memories and found that Jeff was a good kid even though he was twice as old as us.

When he answered the phone, he said, "Hello, Grandma. How are you?"

"Just fine, Jeff. Is your truck still for sale."

"Yes, it is. Do you know somebody that wants it?"

"As a matter of fact I do. What are you asking?"

"It's only seven months old. It cost me $44,000. I'd like to get around 39 for it."

"If I tell you a secret, will you keep it."

"Sure, Grandma. What is it?"

"Jeff, I mean it. This is on your honour. On your honour as a police officer."

"This sounds serious. Sure I'll keep the secret."

"You always were a good boy. Well, I won some money on a lottery."

"Good for you Grandma. How much?"

"A little over two hundred thousand dollars. I want the truck and I have the cash. I'll even throw in my car so your wife has something to drive around the city."

"What are you going to do with the truck, Grandma?"

"I'm going on vacation for a few months. I'm going to put a fifth wheel on it for a small trailer. I want to see my country."

"All by yourself?"

"I'm a big girl, Jeff. Now will you sell me the truck or will I buy from somebody else?"

"If you want it, it's yours."

"Could you bring it over now?"

"Sorry, Grandma, but I have night shift and before that a birthday party. The earliest I could get it to you is tomorrow morning."

"I guess that'll have to do."

"I'll see you at a little after seven if that's not too early."

"That's fine. I'll put a pot on."

"Thank's, Grandma."

When Ellen put down the phone she was smiling. Then she looked serious. "Do you have that much cash?"

"We always carry a certain amount of cash and our banks issued us debit cards with no limits."

"I've never heard of that."

"You need lots and lots of money."

Sex that night was subdued and I still went out to run Baron. We were both anxious to run tonight. Something was brewing and I didn't know what. It was just a feeling.

We got up early and had breakfast. I cleaned the dishes and put them away before Jeff arrived. He had a talk with Ellen to find if the truck is what she wanted. It was but it was huge. They went out to see the vehicle and we saw through the windows what it looked like.

Ellen insisted that Jeff look over her car before she signed the papers over to him. Jeff did the same thing but Ellen said, "Will you take the papers and get them processed for me? I know you just got off work but I'm anxious."

"Sure Grandma." She handed him a thick manilla envelope with five bundles of hundred dollar bills.

Jeff looked at the money and then Ellen. "Are you sure, Grandma?"

"Your truck is just right. The only thing better would be to get a Hummer and I don't mean those toys GM makes."

"With or without armour," he said with a laugh.

"Armour for sure and a fifty on the roof."

"Good to clear your way through traffic."

"My idea precisely. Maybe I can get a red light like you have."

"That might work. I'll bring the paperwork back soon. The place opens at eight."

Jeff left and we had everything ready to go but it stayed in the house. Ellen made notes to her relatives to clean out the fridge and water the plants. A cash incentive was offered to make sure nobody felt as though they were being imposed on and that everything happened as it should.

Jeff came back and handed the papers to Ellen and said, "There was a mistake. There was a lot more money there than needed for the taxes."

"I didn't make a mistake. I want you to look in on the house once in a while. Our relatives are coming over to take care of the food, plants, cut the grass, and collect the mail. No strangers will be here. If anybody knows I won the money they may come looking to find some of it. Don't take chances."

"People put money in banks, Grandma."

"Yes, and you never have to arrest thieves."

"Some people might take the cash but I'll watch your house for free. It's part of my job. You're paying far too much for this work, Grandma."

"Then do it for free. The money is for my great grandson or daughter."

Jeff conceded defeat and said, "Thank's, Grandma. We can use it."

After a hug and a kiss Jeff left in Ellen's car. We started loading the truck as soon as possible. It even had a fibreglass lid to protect stuff in the box.

Ellen talked to relatives that were dependable and some agreed to help or to send over their sons to do some work. It was late enough when we finished for Ellen to go to her lawyer to see if she could sign the papers early. He wasn't appreciative but did change his schedule to let her sign the papers. He was given a list as to who would be taking care of the house. If anybody else started prowling around he was told to report it to the police. He had access to seventeen thousand dollars so he could pay taxes and other expenses for years.

We went to an ATM and Ellen was amazed at what our debit card could milk from the machine. There was no five hundred dollar limit either.

At a public phone I called Dr Vale's office to say goodbye to Herb.

The receptionist said after a preamble that, "Herb didn't come in today. He didn't phone either."

"Thanks. I'll phone his home."

"Ask him to call us if he's sick."

"I will."

The phone rang until the answering machine picked it up but nothing was on the tape that was out of the ordinary.

Kim looked, acted, and thought worry. "They took him."

"Who?"

"I don't think it was Colins' people. My feelings go with Knox."

Ellen said, "Who's Knox?"

"When people read minds you have to watch what you tell people. If I told you too much they would kill you to keep you quiet. We're going to Toronto and I want to get there soon. We may even catch them on the way."

"How —"

"Drive, now."

Ellen did drive. She had a veritable lead foot. I would have pushed even harder. We came to speed traps and slowed down then flew again. Kim and I wanted to cry but this wouldn't help us.

We told Ellen the whole story. She didn't believe what was said about Knox. We stopped to get fuel and pee. Even Baron had to work fast and he did at our urging. The guns were ready but I made sure a second time. To keep occupied the healing was started on Kim and Ellen. We tried studying but that didn't work. I contemplated sex but this would even be more difficult.

Along the way I thought of what must have happened. Colins' people checked Herb out and must have rated him high on their list. Knox' people read the minds of Colin's people and made their own check. Herb must have had his shield down and they read his thoughts. Another idea slammed into me. Herb could be wounded or dead in his home right now.

At the next service centre I raced in and called the house in London. Joy answered. I said, "Joy, listen carefully. Send the message to the rest. Load the motorhome up with weapons and drive to that mall in Unionville. Do you have that?"

"We are going against Knox?"

"They have Herb."

"We'll be there."

"Thanks."

When I raced back to the truck, Ellen asked, "What did you do?"

"Drive!"

Ellen took off out of the service centre like a rocket. After she got on the highway I said, "I called in the pack."

"But aren't most children?"

"We're going on the offensive for the first time. If we hide we will eventually be captured and killed or just die. If we fight and win there's a chance that some of us will survive."

"I'm old. I have a stake in this. Herb's my grandson. Let the children stay where they are."

"They have almost as big a stake in this as we do. They can fight even if it's not with a gun and they may be the difference in us succeeding or not."

Ellen was in pain. "They're so young."

"They're pack. We're a group, not a collection of individuals."

Ellen was quiet but she sought a way to save us. I had done the same and found no solution that would not give us more problems later.

London was quite a distance from Toronto. Unionville was even further to the east. We would get there much sooner than the pack. This would allow us a chance to reconnoitre the property but if they had espers there we wouldn't be able to do much.

We slowed down as we got near the city because we couldn't function as well with all the people around us. Searching for radar traps was just too difficult under these conditions. Before people got too dense we shifted east on the smaller roads and drove south toward Unionville.

We weren't hungry but acid was eating up our stomachs. We were far enough away from the espers and Colins' men to phone the pack.

They had come a hundred and fifty kilometres which was pretty good considering. They were on the west side of Toronto but it would take an hour to reach us.

Ellen asked, "What are you going to do when we get to this property?"

"Over the last year we made lots of plans about taking the place. I'm trying to reconcile the plans to the present situation."

"What do you mean, reconcile?"

"First we have to state our objective."

"It's to rescue Herb."

"What if one of Knox' security people start shooting at us?"

"We shoot back."

"They'll be trying to kill us. Are we to take our time and shoot very carefully to wound? Remember that this gives them time to shoot at us."

Ellen thought on the matter and said, "In that case you have to shoot to kill, the same as they do."

"Fine, Knox is shooting at us or she isn't. Are we going to allow her to find our commune and kidnap the children and then kill them when she's through with them? She thought they were unsalvagable a year ago and they would be even more so now."

"That's a lot harder question. Can you capture her?"

"And do what? Keep her in a private jail? She's the force driving most of the attacks on us."

"I don't know what to do."

"You do know but you don't want to say it. We're not a particularly violent society but violence is sometimes called for. She attacked me, my sister, and our pack. Now she took our husband. In a year she could take our babies."

"Babies?"

"We may be pregnant."

The protection of innocent infants pushed Ellen over the dividing line. "You should kill her, even if it's an execution."

"That was my plan. We're not a large army that can afford to take loses to gain a goal. We're too few in number. If we hinder ourselves with civilised rules of conduct we're even more sure to fail."



-------

Chapter 9


We drove near the Knox property. It was different now. I could detect the minds that had searched for us but they were not currently in search mode. We didn't dare probe their minds because they would detect us. The best we could do was watch from a distance with a pair of binoculars. Herb was here, both Kim and I were sure of it, but he had his block up. We could also feel fear and it had to emanate from him. It was possible we weren't detected because they were studying him.

The house and grounds inside the wall looked no different than it had when we were here before. Outside had one small change.

To attack the house, a great many other targets had to be secured first. Our preliminary objective was an escape tunnel that ran from the security building, under the wall and to a small garage type structure used to store the equipment to rough cut the outer foliage. Knox bought land around her property as it became available to improve her security and privacy.

This tunnel had been of fairly recent construction. We knew that Knox' paranoia would have it built. One of the people that attacked us had a partial memory that they had picked up from security, otherwise we wouldn't have this information.

It was also a sure bet that it was bugged at the two ends and probably along its short length.

Two and a half kilometres from the house was the cell site for this area. This would have to be taken or we could have some unwelcome intruders.

Another objective was a transformer that fed the property. It wasn't on public property but Knox had not moved it inside her walls. The heavy cables all went underground from there. Seventy two hundred volts fed the transformer and three feeds of one ten came out.

We had made up many scenarios but none worked that well until I found out about the escape tunnel.

There was some construction on a road to the west and three homes were being constructed a few kilometres away. I looked to see if we could steal some construction equipment. This was a possibility because the sky was overcast and it looked like a storm was coming.

Little else was happening. The area had been rural but was now luxury residential. The homes were far apart and many had walls around them. To the west was a gated community but that was over four kilometres away. They had their own security.

Ellen drove back to Unionville and we parked at the larger of the malls. Raindrops started to fall on the windshield when an expensive motorhome pulled in. We had parked far from the rest of the cars and the large vehicle parked beside us.

Even before it stopped Bobby and Joy came charging out and I ran to meet them. We had been talking for the last few minutes and everybody was crying. Rather than get wet, I moved everybody to the motorhome leaving Baron in the pickup.

Everybody wanted to hear again how Jess died. This time I pushed my thoughts so Ellen could understand. Tiffany was one of the most affected because Jess had been her best friend. Somehow or other I introduced Ellen and tried to console the rest. I think I needed a lot of sympathy myself.

I channelled loss into anger and aimed it at Knox. She had our husband and he needed to be rescued.

The dogs knew of our loss and mourned in their way. Now that Ellen had met the pack I took the terriers our to meet Baron. They smelt each other in the way of dogs and there was no overt hostility. I had to explain in pictures that Baron was now part of the pack. After a few more sniffs this seemed to be accepted.

Back inside the motorhome, Dina said, "I see that we're going in hard."

Dina was not a pacifist but she hated to hurt people. I said, "We have to. If we try to save the enemy it means more of us will be hurt or killed."



"What about students if there are any?"

"We secure them. They can't leave."

"Why?"

"A hysterical girl could bring the police. I don't want this mess to reach the public. Try to take them prisoners if you want. If they have a chance of escaping, shoot them."

"They're like us."

"Look, Dina. This is the way it has to be. The pack comes first. All others come second."



She hung her head, "Alright, Piper. I'll do what I must."

The plans we had drawn up from memory and maps we had bought were brought out. I told them about the tunnel and this cheered them up. The other parts of the plan wouldn't change.

We brought all we needed with us. An investigation later would bring the authorities back to us if we weren't careful. The motorhome had brought three lengths of one and a half metre polyvinyl rigid drainage pipe. We carried the same length in four aught wire. Three pair of locking pliers, gloves, soft nylon rope and welding shields that darkened instantly when exposed to an arc.

I was concerned about the rain and hoped our umbrella would be enough to keep some of us dry.

We had planned the transformer scenario with the aid of an electrical engineer we found online. There were many what-ifs but we were still going to do it.

Dina was driven down the main road by Tiffany. There was little traffic here and the girls tried to hide what they were doing. The bundle of overhead phone lines were easy to see. A light rope with a weight on it flew over the cable and this was used to pull a heavier rope over. This was attached to the hitch on the truck. With a shout, they raced off and yanked the wire out of the connector. The truck shook because the copper wire was not that easy to sever.

The rope was disconnected from the truck and they raced off and turned around to go to the cell phone site for this area. The large tower was easy to spot as was the precast concrete cube below the antenna. There were homes around but none that were right beside the unit. These structures were subject to vandalism so they were strong. The padlock on the door was reached by putting an arm up a section of pipe with the key. Our lock picking skills weren't the best but we came prepared with 'B' sized tanks of acetylene and oxygen. Tiffany helped carry the heavy apparatus to the door. The pipe was cut away with a lot of liquid metal falling and splashing on the ground. A few moments later the padlock was cut. We could have used other methods but this was much quieter.

Brandon, Nicolas, and Anthony walked across the nicely cut wet grass to the garage that was ten metres from Knox's wall. Anthony could see the cameras that rotated all the time. They were not really random though. The boys ran fast, following Anthony until they were under the cameras and invisible to those in the house. They carried the tools to get in as well as our weapons. On their backs were some large packs with the armour we had taken from this property almost a year ago.

At the same time William, Tatum, Kim, and I approached the transformer vault that serviced the compound. Kim had to be assisted but she tried to use her crutches as much as she could. The vault was a hundred metres away from the garage and behind some shrubbery. The corner edge of a long coarse file was used to cut the shackle of the lock. We made little noise though there were no people around. The shrubbery protected us from view. It was our thoughts that could betray us. Our shields were as high as we could get them.

A specialised wrench fit in a cavity and onto an odd shaped head of a bolt. We twisted hard to remove the bolts to the top of the vault and the covers opened wide. One ten was dangerous if you touched ground or one of the other leads. We had to work on this live and under an umbrella. A plastic cap came off where each heavy wire led to the property. A one metre length of four aught cable was placed on the live conductor and secured with the locking pliers. This made a fair connection. The other end of the cable was wrapped with the nylon rope and the rope slid through the plastic pipe. This secured the end of the jumper to the plastic pipe.

When all three were done, I used a silenced pistol to nick the heavy insulation over the heavy lugs that connected to three high voltage cables coming into the vault. The plastic pipes were placed near the primary. The rain came down on this but didn't do anything yet.

I used the cell phone and called Dina. She answered, "I'm ready." She was already inside the building studying what to do.

"Shut it down now."

Dina just pushed a button and the power that fed the unit stopped. She pulled a disconnect and put a heavy lock on the handle. In seconds she had the door closed and hurried to the pickup. The land line disruption would not immediately be noticed but the cell phone might.

I said verbally to the three with me, "Are you ready?"

I got three nods of their heads. They wore the helmets so didn't have to look anyway. On the verbal count of three the wires from the secondaries of the transformer touched the primary side of the transformer. Seventy two hundred volts flew down the wires feeding the property when only one ten was supposed to be. Anything connected to these wires would be fried.

There were three explosions in the vault. We knew this could happen but it was still a shock. All that copper was instantly vaporised. All the breakers carrying a load would fuse and the emergency generator couldn't do anything. They would be hooked up to a destroyed system or destroyed themselves.

There were no fingerprints so we left everything behind and raced to the garage. Kim and I were last because she couldn't move quickly. Ellen was kilometres away in the motorhome taking care of Megan. Both were out of range of the espers in the house. We had our shields up high and hoped it was enough.

The cameras didn't move as we approached which was a good sign. We searched for the opening to the tunnel and found it in a small room with a wood floor. It was Sparky that did the finding with his sense of smell. We couldn't budge the covering.

I called, "Brandon. Pick this up."

I got his smile and he focussed his powers and his fingertips. The top groaned and then we heard the crackling of concrete. Brandon was using all his muscles and more of his power than ever before. Metal rods snapped out and Brandon pulled even harder. Sweat was coming from his brow and I was worried he was going to do hurt himself.

The cement slab pulled free and Brandon took it into the garage proper. The dogs were eager to go down the tunnel and they had to be forced back with the concrete.

We raced down the steps but the dogs were there ahead of us. Kim and I were last but we didn't mind. We went down a hallway with weapons in our hands and powerful flashlights. The next door was also cement and Brandon had to try to shift it away from him. The sound of breaking concrete was loud in the hall. We could have used explosive charges but we had no time to find or make them.

The concrete panel finally gave way. I opened my mind enough to know that four people were waiting on the other side with guns.

"Brandon, when you break it free, keep it the way it is and run forward. Four people. The ones you miss are the ones we take."

He was very worried now just like the rest of us. "I got it."

The way he said it helped the rest of us draw some additional courage. When it came free, Brandon pushed it into the room and picked it up. We fired to both sides and the floor under the slab. We hit people and seconds later Brandon connected with the concrete wall. Two people had been caught behind it. The dogs almost got hurt too but wisely stayed back.

With our presence known we used our minds to locate people. Those that had ideas of shooting us were shot instead. One woman in a drugged daze was struck and tie-wraps put on her wrists.

We pushed up into the security building while Bobby and Joy monitored the tunnels to the house and the lab. The dogs came with us because they wanted to hunt. Our bright flashlights blinded our adversaries and gave us a decided advantage. Some people who were just wounded were tied up.

With just two more in the security building, Kim and I started our slow way down to the basement and toward the lab. This is where the experiments were carried on and where the survivors were separated from the dead.

Bobby raced behind us. He was an extra set of eyes and fair with a small calibre pistol. The door with the hand print was closed and I used mine. Surprisingly, it opened. My identification had not been removed from the system. We didn't go in, though. Bullets came our way and I took one of our grenades and pulled the pin. When the lever popped free, I counted two seconds and tossed the grenade in.

We plugged our ears but heard the scream. They couldn't see but must have guessed what we had. As soon as the explosion went off we raced in and shot any survivors. Baron took out one and as did Turbo. Two more grenades were used to clean out the rest of the rooms but we had to keep the dogs back. The noise hurt them more than us.

Brandon caught up just in time to open the door leading upward to the garage and the lab.

There were two snipers in the garage. I used the AK-74 with two hands and just guessed where to shoot. Brandon ran through at this time and shot the two people trying to get away.

I was extremely angry. "Brandon, you follow orders or else." My anger was so strong that he cringed.

There was no opposition at the lab door but it was locked. I knew people were waiting because bullets came through the door. The fact that we were behind a concrete wall was what saved us. I used the AK the same way I had before and only my hands were exposed.

When I concentrated on somebody, they fled to one side. They could detect me the way I could detect them. I had to change clips twice but we had a hole in the door and everybody taking cover. A grenade went in and we backed up into the stairwell.

The door came flying at the wall even though it opened the other way. We raced in and shot everybody with a gun and I shot the two lab techs even if they weren't armed. They had killed far too many to get away.

The lab was completely dark as there were no windows. Knox liked this as a security feature.

Herb was in another room and we were careful as we approached. There were two people in there with him. They had fled from the lab to this room when the firing started.

I got to my knees and shot upward. I had to move away quickly as bullets came at me through the wall. Kim was back but she had a pistol. Balancing on her crutches, she shot from one side. The bullet went through the wall and hit one person. More bullets came and one hit my arm just above the elbow. It felt like a red hot rod was laid against it. It was Bobby that pumped round after round through the wall that hit the last person.

I had stumbled and fell and got up with some difficulty. I was bleeding a lot and I couldn't use the rifle. Kim shot sideways into the lock and the door opened with a push. There was a body behind it or almost in that state because the man was still breathing. I held my wound and used my shoulder to push the door open wider.

Herb was strapped in a chair and his head hung down. Surprisingly it was Kim that gave orders, "Stay here with Herb."

"I can help."

"Not much." She went back into the lab and recovered the first aid kit hung on the wall. This was hard to do from crutches. Bobby provided light in the dark room as Kim expertly bandaged my arm.

She was quick and sure. In this I saw a side of my sister I had not seen before. She looked at Bobby and said, "Follow me." He had wild eyes and worried about every noise.

I checked Herb. He couldn't respond at first. I searched through the minds of the ones that had not yet died. I wanted to see what they had given him. He was given a truth drug and even that had not got him to say anything or even lower his shield. I had to love him even more because he was trying to protect us.

I put the flashlight down so the beam went up and illuminated the ceiling. With one good hand I undid the straps holding him secured to the chair. Herb moved his head and I pushed my thoughts to him, "Herb, can you hear me? Kim and I came to get you."

"What?"

"Kim and I came to get you?"

"Run, they're after you. They're shooting."

"It's ok, Herb."

A sound came from the hallway and I put my shield up as high as it would go and shut off the flashlight. There was the sound of glass breaking under a heavy shoe as the person entered the lab. My AK was in the hall but I had my pistol. It was hell to draw it and then aim it toward the doorway. I could not read the mind because that person had a shield too.

I didn't want bullets flying near Herb so I concentrated on what I remembered that was on the floor and moved forward slowly but in overdrive. My toe touched a body. I moved over the body and got to the doorway and then crouched.

From the darkness I heard a man's voice say, "I know you're here." His speech came out very slowly.

There were shell casings all around me. I had touched one with my foot. I bent down and found it with my fingers and lightly tossed it down the hallway.

Bright light strobed from his pistol. I could see his features as if this were a film run in slow motion. I couldn't take risks and aimed my gun at his head. The first bullet caught him in the forehead and his head was flung back. I pumped two more into him just to make sure he wouldn't be a threat. My arm hurt worse than before but I didn't dare drop the gun. I remembered to come back to regular speed and heard the man fall to the floor. The adrenaline had surged through my body but now I was tired, so tired.

I hoped the healing would work and concentrated on it with all my might. I had to sit on the floor beside Herb and I put more effort into my healing.

The pack was having problems. The lab building and the security house were cleaned out but not the house. There was shooting outside of the buildings but most of this was small calibre. The storm was hiding some of the noise we made.

Some unarmed people were running around. The dogs, along with Bobby and Joy, were rounding them up in the rain.

I saw through William's eyes that a car surged forward from the house. It was too far to tell but William thought it was Knox. Bullets hit the car in many places but it kept going. She couldn't escape, especially now. If only I were there. I'd use the rifle.

Noise suddenly came from the gates as William's view shifted. White smoke came from both stone portals and the gates came tumbling down. I didn't know of this way of getting out.

Knox suddenly turned off the driveway instead of making a break for it. I did not understand this until a car came bursting in and drove over the gates. I thought 'police' at first but Bobby was close and he called out, "Carstairs!"

Knox was out of our range but she got out of her car and began to shoot at the new threat. She was close and more accurate.

Being captured by Colins and Carstairs was little better than by Knox. The pack began to shoot at the approaching cars. I had to get out there.

From the hallway I heard the running of steps and two young voices. One said, "Maybe we can hide here?"

"I don't think so. We were told never to come here."

I had enough time to read their thoughts and know that they were walking tongues used to satisfy Knox' clit. I didn't want them to escape and I could use them myself. My pistol was in my holster and I picked up my flashlight but didn't turn it on. There were bodies all over and I walked around or over them.

The girls tentatively climbed the steps in the darkness. I waited until they felt through the dark and came to where the lab door had been. I turned on the flashlight and yelled, "Hands up or I shoot."

The girls were stunned. One peed herself. The second one found relief in fainting. Still in the gruff voice I said, "You move and you die."

The girl had no way of answering because her mind wasn't working well. She was just a scared animal. I walked through the lab and shone the light in the girl's eyes. She was pretty and young, just what turned Knox on. The one staring at me was named Stephanie and the other was Brittany. They were eleven and twelve. I wondered how Knox could keep them as pets and not get into trouble. I was too busy to look.

I was only a metre away by now. I pushed into her mind, "You're my captive. Serve me well and you live. Run and you die."

Her thoughts said, "I won't run," but her lips couldn't function well enough to speak.

"Follow me!"

I turned and the young girl followed. She stopped when the flashlight showed the first body. I found a beaker but I had only one hand and it held the flashlight. "Get the beaker and fill it with water in the sink."

Stephanie was stunned and I was angry. I knew she wasn't used to this level of violence but I needed help now. I got behind her and pushed the flashlight into her back. This pushed her toward the sink.

"Fill the beaker or I will have you buried with this one!"

Stephanie came out of her shock and filled the beaker then looked at me. Her eyes were big and she was shaking. "Throw it in Brittany's face to wake her up."

The girl hurried to comply. Brittany recovered quickly. She was still on the floor when I said, "You belong to me now. I have work for you."

She knew I was female and thought she was going to service me as she did Knox. "Get up now. If you're slow, I'll leave you here with the bodies."

"No, I'll do whatever you want."

"Get up!"

She almost jumped to her feet and stood very close to Stephanie. "My husband is in the other room. He's been drugged. The room is littered with bodies. I killed some of them. Do your work and you survive."

Both were too stunned to answer verbally. I led them through the lab. They stopped and tried to walk around the bodies and the pools of blood. I had them drag some of the bodies to one side and had to threaten them with the gun when my flashlight was laid on the counter. We were being attacked and I had to get going.

Herb looked up when I came to the doorway of the room but he didn't recognise me. Brittany picked up the rifle and put it on my shoulder for me. The girls entered the other room and got under Herb's armpits and hoisted him as best they could. If Herb had not assisted they couldn't have moved him far.

We left the lab and went out the set of doors that lead directly outside. It was still raining. There was some daylight left though it was getting dark. I dropped the flashlight by the door and we walked toward the house.

Two figures were hiding behind the house. I took out my gun as a threat. Oee girl was a few months older than me and the other was only ten. Both were here to serve Knox though the younger one was smart and could make it into one of Knox's businesses one day. If I had my way this would never happen.

The older one started to leave and then she saw us. She stopped dead. I raised the gun and pointed. "Come here. You're mine now. Serve or die. Make your choice."

Both thought serve was to please me sexually. They didn't move though. I fired one bullet at the foundation walls and they ran to me.

Jessica was the older one. I said to her, "Get under Herb's arm to support him. Ashley, you follow."

The young one found her voice and said, "Yes, ma'am."

We got around the house only to see Brandon and Nicolas bringing out some of the RPGs I saw in movies. The rest of the pack was shooting from concealment at the intruders. None were hit but the possibly existed. Colins' men were not armed with rifles, only pistols, and they were all silenced. There was thunder and I dearly hoped that the neighbours had their windows closed and that the gunfire they heard was not recognised for what it really was.

Dina came to me and took Herb and my prisoners away. Bullets came our way and fear was everywhere. I had to admit that I felt just as bad as the rest. Kim was laying on a car with her crutches leaning against the side. She was taking shots at the approaching men. She did not look up but said, "Is he ok?" She could just curl up into a ball but she had to hang on.

"Truth drugs. Use the rifle instead of the pistol."

"It'll make more noise." We were both worried about the police.

"Better than dead."

I had a thought just before she sighted in and pushed the thought out to the intruders that the boys were going to use the RPG's now. I knew they were too far away for the rockets to be used accurately but they could still kill.

The sound of the rifle was loud and I saw a man fall. The rest of the men dove for cover and I called to the boys, "Show the RPGs as if you're going to use them."

They did as Kim kept shooting at the people. Only two more rounds were needed before the men fled. They were good and kept firing at us as those in the lead pulled back. I read their thoughts but had to shift to someone outside the wall to find that Kim, Ellen, and I had been seen scouting out this property. A private investigator had called Carstairs. Colins had pushed to attack at this time because Knox would have her hands full dealing with us.

Knox was still shooting and the men now really shot at her. They were the only people that could hit her.

Even before they all left we began to move. Kim came over to see to Herb while Dina got in the car we were using as a shield and drove forward. The intruders had picked up their wounded and we let them go. Brandon shouldered the RPG at closer range. When I looked into their thoughts they didn't think we would use the rocket but they weren't sure.

We watched them leave and I couldn't hear any sirens coming this way but it could happen any minute.

Bobby said, "Knox is shot. It looks bad. Do you want me to shoot her?"



-------

Chapter 10


This was shocking for a young boy but he was pack and he got his thoughts from the rest of us. I said, "No, we better interrogate her while we can."

Tiffany and Nicolas went over to Knox. We watched in case anybody else decided to try to enter or leave. Our guns were hidden and cars even came by. The drivers noticed the iron gates on the ground and I worried even more. My arm hurt like hell but there was little I could do.

We stood guard as the house was searched for people. There were only two at this point. The garage was opened and everybody herded in. There was no electricity so we had no lights.

Tiffany got the pickup truck and we dragged the gates out of view of the road so the portal would just look open. There was still no sirens and I wondered if our luck would hold out. It then occurred to me that the neighbours could not phone the police.

Dina stood guard alone at the front gate. She was not sure of this but would do it for the pack. I was driven back to the house to organise. Bodies were piled up near the crematorium but only the smaller ones. There was one body about seventeen. I had not seen her before and she did not look like security. There were lots more bodies but we didn't have any people able to move them except Brandon.

I saw him come out with tears in his eyes as he brought a body out. Behind him, Tatum and Nicolas used a stretcher to bring another. Nobody was happy about the results. The cost had been too high.

I wasn't the only one hurt. Missy had an arm wound that had shattered the bone. She wasn't doing bad but we kept her on a pallet we had made for her. William and Tiffany had been grazed but both refused to let up.

Knox was dying. Basically, our objective was accomplished. We obtained a lot more information from her mind only because she was unconscious and not fighting us. I found out about a camp set up outside the property where Knox winnowed out the useless from those she could use.

I had to decide what to do. At this point we could leave with all the documents we could find. The new information in Knox mind gave a second choice a lot more weight. It was also far more risky though it would give us a sort of freedom later. We had assumed that the people here would talk to the police and we would be fugitives for the rest of our lives.

I looked through those we had collected. There were five security people and three of them were wounded or otherwise hurt. The house staff had all survived and this represented four people. Three others lived off the property and basically took care of the grounds.

There were three young and one older girl that could only lick cunt. Three more were slated to be shunted into businesses if they proved themselves. Two of the three girls used for sex were here only a little over a week. Three other girls had been transferred to a house that served women clients. It was prostitution but apparently the madam treated the girls better than most.

Four espers were found but one was not likely to make it. Another was wounded and he was being tended to by one of the women in security.

None of the teachers were here. They had been given other jobs and they took them. They had little choice when Knox wanted something. In all I had twenty people here and three more were coming the day after tomorrow.

When I walked into the open garage, everybody stood. I simply went down the line reading the thoughts of everyone. When I got to the less wounded esper, the man of thirty would not drop his shield.

I said simply, "I killed lots of people today. I'll kill you here and now unless you drop your block."

He snarled at me and I was sure he did not believe me. I took out my gun and moved it to my good arm. The block was still up so I lined up on his head and shot him.

I moved to the next esper that had a similar snarl but his shield was down now and he was very anxious to give me anything I wanted. The next two espers were women and they gave no trouble either. The girls were petrified of me and two had peed themselves.

With no more trouble I had the two healthy espers carry the body to the crematorium.

When they came back I said to all of them, "Sheila Knox tried to kill my family. We ran. She found my husband and kidnapped him. I killed a total of eighteen people and Knox is near death.

"I have a few options at this point. I kill all of you and leave scot-free. I know that all of you believe me on this point. Another option is to take over Knox's position. She had you all watched. If you ran you died or were sent to a foreign brothel to live out the remainder of your days. Some lucky ones became stars in some snuff films.

"Some of you are ready to run. Since I read minds, I know just who. I am going to make work details. You will each work as hard as you can to please me. Failure to do so is detrimental to your well being."

I divided up the people and sent them with some of my own to clean up. Some got a hose and a broom and started washing blood from the concrete of the floor.

Tatum had seen me kill the man. She had pled for the man's life. I could not take chances at this critical time. If I did less, I would have untold problems later. To prove my case I showed the mind of the seriously wounded man and the woman. They were crazy and would kill as easy as I did but for their own interests. To loose them on the world would be the greatest of evils. They had found how to make the drug.

Tiffany phoned Ellen to say that everyone had survived. This is how we knew that the lock had been removed from the cell site. Ellen was invited to come in the main gate. Tiffany talked around the topic but said that there was a severe trash problem. It was her way of saying that there were a lot of casualties.

Tiffany then called hydro and complained about coming home to a dark house. The damage to the transformer was insignificant to what had happened in the buildings.

The streetlights came on so either they were on a different circuit or hydro had repaired the breakers. What we had done was sure to trip them.

With the bodies near the crematorium, we attacked the damage to the house. It would take weeks of work just to do the exterior. The interior bullet holes would take at least a week but the electrical system would take months. The damage to the other buildings was at least similar.

An hour after Ellen arrived Knox died. I felt a great relief with her dead but some felt at least a little sadness. Death was not common in our culture and we had to deal with it in wholesale amounts now.

Ellen was appalled at what she had found. Herb was only starting to recover and he felt the same way.

We had our first fight. Kim sided with me because I was fighting for the pack. I had a new total of all the people Knox had killed but somehow that figure didn't matter as much as what we had done.

I tried to be reasonable but I found I had turned into a hard person that had to things no person could do and stay sane.

I said, "Bad people died. There is no way around it."

"One girl was not shooting."

"The bullet went through a wall. The death was an accident."

"But you caused the accident."

I got angry and said, "How the hell could you be a paramedic and a PA? You jump on one death when you see many. How much have you campaigned to get alcohol removed so nobody will drink and drive? How much have you campaigned to make sure nobody speeds? You're a hypocrite."

"You could have called the police."

"What would happen to our country and the world if this secret got out?"

"Nothing?"

"You're irrational and a liar."

The fight went on but mostly it was some post traumatic behaviour.

Ellen stayed out of the fight and just tended to all the wounded. I think she fell in love with the pack that night. It wasn't sex but she felt she had found her place. It had all started when Bobby had cried at what he had to do to save the pack and soon more had joined him.

I put on a false front but I was appalled at what we had done. None of us were that rational and I tried to form some structure so we could survive.

The next day Herb went out and bought four large generators. Ellen was not sure if he was coming back but I was fairly certain he would.

The essential services apart from electricity still worked. The motorhome provided breakfast. There was lots of food that was going to start going bad soon.

Herb came back with his shield up as high as it could go. He didn't want to talk to me or Kim. The pack gave some sympathy. Bobby hugging Herb like he would his father if he knew who he was.

The crematorium was fired up and we threw bodies in as good as the SS had done during WWII.

Knox had a contract for all electrical work and the four women came over to inspect what had happened. The motorhome blocked the driveway so they had to walk to the house. They were not criminals or her lovers, just women that were electricians. Tiffany and Knox' surviving security said that Knox had fled but left orders that the property be repaired as good as knew.

The bullet holes were easy to see and they were not hid. A story was concocted that a team of commandos had attacked the house but were driven off by security. Many of the security people were reported to be in the hospital.

The tradeswomen were not prepared to deal with this type of mayhem. Tiffany read their thoughts and worked hard to shore up their mental structure. Good pay given in cash was a good incentive. They would tie in with hydro to get this all fixed.

The police came when the electricians were here. Tiffany again had to be our spokesmen. The police would like to get to the house but they had no excuse to do so.

The corporal asked, "Do you know who sabotaged your electrical system?" They knew of the phone lines being ripped out and the cell site shut down.

Tiffany tried to act haughty like Knox and said, "Miss Knox was attacked before. It can only be the same people."

"We'd like to talk to Miss Knox."

"She does not wish to talk to you. She fled until the repairs are complete. The best I can do is pass on your request if and when she decides to call me."

"Surely you have some idea where she is?"

"She did not want me to know. People have tried to assault if not kill her and she is not about to invite them to where she is now."

"We would like to see the damage."

"You will not get that without a search warrant. Her lawyers were already appraised of what happened. They will be protecting her rights in her absence."

The cops left with the intention of seeking such a warrant and Tiffany collected the names of who they would have to talk to do this. One of the legal firms Knox dealt with was contacted and told that Knox had been attacked again. Knox would usually demand that they come here so Tiffany demanded this in Knox name. The pending search warrant was mentioned. The name of the probable Justice of the Peace the police would use was stated.

The seriously wounded esper's mind was searched. He was not a good person and never would be. In fact, he was a thoroughly nasty man. The other two were only less so. These two I questioned in depth about what they knew about Knox and her operation. They actually knew quite a bit. I learned that there were three others at large that had the knowledge of how to manufacture the Abicore.

One of them was a younger women that was very submissive to Knox. Knox made sure she was pleased sexually and almost fed from Knox' hand. This was just a way for Knox to have a person she could dominate and would do whatever her mistress wanted. In this case it was to monitor the espers and the new ones being produced.

The espers as a group would tie in with security every once in a while. They came here to pick up the drug so they could continue their search for us. They had intimate knowledge of where Knox had set up her camp. This had to be closed down and everybody concerned with it captured.

We found out why the espers were so good. They had been subject to torture in various forms until they could read minds very well and also erect a block. I was appalled to find that some of them had some talents that were in line with what Brandon could do.

One woman was reported able to fly like Superwoman. Knox did not know of this. They rightly figured she would have the woman killed. Knox' surrogate was developing some sort of shield that would stop bullets some day. So far it only stopped stones thrown at her. The last was a man but he never claimed to do anything special.

The man here that we had captured was named Pete. I said to him, "Show me your ability."

"It's minor and doesn't work very well. When I'm nervous it doesn't work at all."

I said nothing but waited. Nothing happened but I felt a tickle around my block. I read his mind and called Laura. She was the other esper. "What did you see?"

"Pete flickered but I raised my block a bit and he stayed solid."

"Have you known him to completely disappear?"

"Yes, twice. Both times he was drunk and trying to impress me."

I said, "Do it again, Pete. Both of you stay out of my mind while I look."

"Yes, ma'am."

I saw what he did and how. I allowed his commands to reach my brain but not his other thoughts. He had disappeared. The reason I asked instead of just reading is because it was easier to gather data if the person was thinking of what you wanted to find.

Kim came over with crutches and she had witnessed what could be done. She said, "Three people attacked us near Orillia a while ago. What could they do?"

Pete said, "The man could float above the ground. He leans somehow and he can drift the way we walk and run. He could not go fast. He was with Miss Knox longer than any of us and he could see through walls."

Kim said, "Anything else?"

"One of the women could float but not very well. I think she was the one that was the best at forming a shield. She was also the best at tracking. The other woman couldn't do much except project fear. If she did it the right way, you didn't know somebody else was making you afraid."

Kim said, "Go through your mind studying what you know about every person in your group so I have an idea of how they did everything."

The man did as he was asked and Laura had to do the same thing. Joseph was the wounded man and also he gave up any secrets he had. Sometimes searching someone's mind was like looking for facts on the net without a search engine. It all depended how organised a person was. Somebody like Knox was a pleasure to search apart from the cesspit she had where we had a conscience.

Ellen came in with Tiffany and they went immediately to Joseph. They laid hands on the man and concentrated. I could feel them try to heal but Ellen had very little to offer. Ellen asked, "Will you two help us?"

I didn't really mind if Joseph died. I saw him as a person that was someone that could not be reformed. At the same time I wouldn't object to it.

I said, "We can all try." I looked at the three espers and sent them what we knew about healing. This way Joseph could try to heal himself. Tiffany was more of a conductor and she got each of us to do something a bit different so we learned. This is the way we worked in the pack usually.

This seemed to work well because Josephs pain decreased. It tired us out, though. The investigator in me wanted to explore this a bit more. A good way to start would be to heal the pack and then the rest.

We started on Tiffany though she tried to refuse. Kim was next and then I had my turn. For some reason I healed Laura and Pete though they had little wrong with them. I know I felt better after being treated but what repair was done or being done was unknown.

The work details picked up the spent cartridges and the pieces of damaged plaster. Blood was in may places and had to be removed.

All of the electrical equipment that was working was destroyed and some units that were turned off were fried when the high voltage jumped across switches. I ordered temporary refrigerators and freezers be found. The emergency generator was protected and out of the circuit and it was only damaged. If we could get it to work it would be a big help.

The lawyers came and Tiffany laid down the law in Knox' name. Tiffany said that an attack had happened on the house and a lot of damage done. The lawyers suggested insurance. She didn't mind this since most of the public in Canada got screwed for car insurance. The investigators would see the damage done by bullets and this would interest the police.

We worked through Tiffany to pluck what knowledge we could from the two lawyers. They were not honest people but I guess were honest enough for our interests. She had to keep them talking because there was a lot of data to be mined. The lawyers only took care of some segments of Knox' empire and had almost no knowledge of the rest. This is what Knox wanted.

Ideas were formulated in our minds on how to transfer Knox' assets to us or to institutions we controlled. The school was already set up and a good start. The lawyers left to talk to a magistrate about putting a restraining order on the police. This was just the first step because we then had to move up the ladder to more important members of the judiciary. Stopping the search warrant may still be impossible. In any case, the electricians and other people repairing the property would be questioned.

The phone rang many times and we had to take turns managing the empire from the knowledge we had leached from Knox' mind. Knox would not even trust encrypted cell phones and face to face meetings were necessary in some situations. The prostitution of girls was just one such situation. Usually all dealings with crime figures was the same way. Here it was kidnapping, slavery, snuff films, drugs, an ongoing investigation of Colins, and the search for our pack.

I knew this was complicated because we had been going through Knox' data we had on DVD. Managing what she owned was an order of magnitude greater. Knox used her own people for this and she managed them.

Nicolas was called in here because he was the best with numbers. Some of his knowledge was termed abstract but he had a solid grounding in accounting practices. When Nicolas was near we had his knowledge available the same way we shared any data any one of us had gathered. In some cases it wasn't necessary for everybody to store data. In others it was necessary that we could act independently and had to store our own copy.

We now managed assets that had been purchased. This was fairly simple. What Knox had left after we ran was the basic engine for generating this wealth. This engine had to be constantly tinkered with because of unforeseeable changes in the financial markets. In our case we had to alter the focus of some of the businesses and possibly disband some. The operation that produced espers was one needed drastic changes. Ones dealing with prostitution and other criminal activity needed to be destroyed. Slavery would actively sought out so those that bought other people could be exposed.

Herb worked hard to get us up and running. Again Bobby and Joy were nearby to be with him. They couldn't stay with him all the time because they had work to do themselves. His shield never came down. We had to go by what he said and how he said it to find out how he felt. Kim's crying was hard on him and she cried often. She would hold her abdomen at the same time as if cradling a fetus placed there by Herb. Kim wasn't acting and I figured Herbs resolve was crumbling.

The captives looked to Herb as well. He wasn't one of us but had some influence. The boys were afraid of men but would do whatever they could to find some sort of safety.

Knox had felt that three of the girls showed promise in a business sense and I called them over.

I knew their names and history from Knox' mind and from their own. I said mentally, "Please have a seat on the grass with me." The girls took this as an order. "You know I can project my thoughts into your heads. I can also read thoughts and you have all surmised this. There were four groups here. Security and the staff to run the property is easy to understand. The other girls were to please Knox in bed but also do the same for you three. Knox told you she had plans for all of you and this was true. She needed people to run her businesses. These people have to be trained and this is what she was doing. Are there any questions so far?"

Nobody said anything but they did mentally. "My plans for you are the same. You'll work for me instead of Knox. You were also wondering if I'll kill you. My people come first with me. If you are part of this group I'll actively protect each of you. If I was sure of each of you I'd send you off to do what you wanted in life and simply forget you. Even though I can read minds I have no way of knowing when you might someday talk about what happened here."

Amber was the youngest and she said, "Why did you kill all those people? They didn't do anything to you."

I tried to act nonthreatening and said, "You have a lot to learn about Knox. There are some new girls here. Do any of you know what happened to the ones that were here before?"

Nobody spoke because they did not know. "Knox had a lot of businesses. One was an organisation that sent girls to rich women that like girls to lick their pussies. This is prostitution and slavery. One of those girls was rented for a year to a woman in the United States. The other girl went to a home where women rent her services by the hour."

They didn't believe me so I pushed what I learned about this portion of Knox empire into their heads. They saw what Knox saw and experienced the selling of human beings. The girls broke down and cried so I only continued for a bit longer. I made sure they learned how some girls worked in snuff films.

One girl retched at this and was followed by the rest. They had also retched when we took the property.

When they recovered enough I sent them away to clean up the mess and in ten minutes they returned.

"You learned that Knox was not nice and I have to tell you that she killed many more with her experiments. The living failures were killed and disposed of the same way we are doing now. Thankfully, the incidence of brain lesions has been reduced because a good portion of them died of cancer even when they didn't gain telepathy."

Amber said, "I don't want to be here anymore."

"I sympathise with you but you have to stay until we're sure of you."

"I want to go home." She broke down and cried.

We had to wait until she recovered. I knew she would run at the first opportunity. I wanted to allow her to gather some sort of support but the pack was busy.

Sniffer was resting nearby and I called her over. She got up quickly and came to me. I directed her to the girl and the dog sniffed Amber's face and managed to get a few licks in. Amber weakly fought Sniffer until she had to hold the dog. That was enough of an invitation for Sniffer to lay herself down on Amber's lap.

Amber started to relax and then began to pet Sniffer. The dog took the abuse like a pro.

When everybody had settled down I started again. "Sniffer is part of our pack. She's a terrier and bright. Knox gave her and a lot of other dogs a drug. Some dogs died, some went insane, and one was unaffected. She killed all of those for security reasons. Sniffer is the only dog that wasn't treated. Sparky, Dancer, and Turbo are exceptional. They are geniuses in the dog world. They communicate to each other similarly to what humans do now."

They looked at me now with a bit of interest.

"I had an IQ of between 120 and 130 depending on what tests I took. My IQ now is near 200. My memory is exceptional. Espers can do many acts thought impossible. Scientists have such a poor grasp of physics that nobody knows how gravity is created.

"Some espers can fly like Superwoman. Some espers can float above the ground. Some can tell a person that they're not here and that person won't see them. Today we used our mind to help a man heal and then we worked on each other.

"These are only some of the abilities our group has. Others may get these benefits after joining the pack. We may have found a way to make taking the drug safe. It needs more research though. I will assess everybody here to see if they can fit into the pack. I have no idea how many will be invited."

Amber said in a calmer voice, "I don't want to be an esper."

"Fine. You learn and you watch. You can still work for me and not have mental powers. Perhaps one day you will change your mind."

"Never!"

I had to smile at her. "Don't be too sure, Amber. You don't know what's around the corner."

I sent them off to study and to help make the noon meal. Sniffer went with them and she was happy.

The four pleasure girls were next. We sat down and I said, "I have to upset you but I don't want to. The truth though has to be known." They looked at me even more worried than before. "You will want to argue, and call me a liar but please remember, I read minds and one of those minds was Sheila Knox'."

They calmed a bit and I said, "Knox was a lesbian. This school is for girls that are at least bisexual. There are four kinds of people on this property. Security and housekeeping is self-explanatory. There were teachers once but they're gone. We have students that were slated to move up into Knox' organisation after they were educated. The final group is pretty girls.

"The next thing I have to say is that Knox was working on perfecting a drug that would allow some people to read minds. Many failed and died or Knox had them killed. The pack is mostly survivors of Knox' experiments.

"Now we get to you girls. I read minds and I know that each of you has been coasting on your good looks. You get others to do things for you. Most of you like women more than men but not by a lot. You had fights with your family or with your foster family and you left to find an easier life.

"You fell into Knox' hands. She would use you then sell you to other women for political favours or anything the women could do for Knox. The two newest girls here replaced two that were sold."

They were very upset but I continued. "You're mine now. You're going to learn to work and to study. If you work hard and I find that you're not inherently evil I will invite you to join the pack or at least be probationary members. If you don't wish to join then you will continue to work and I'll be the equivalent of your mother. This mother knows what you need and will make sure you get it."

The oldest girl said, "Ah — are you like us?"

"Almost. I like guys a bit more than girls. The main differences is that the drug gave me a good memory and an IQ near 200. I have also always worked hard to get ahead." I saw there was more explanation needed and said, "I have sex with a the girls in my pack. I like it and I like what they do for me."

The next younger thought but didn't say, "How can we join?" She would like to start licking my pussy because she saw me as a power and this attracted her.

"You guys can join by working hard. I'll know when you're dogging it and when you're truly busy. You'll still get time for sex."

The last part interested them but they were still too unsure of their future to think many erotic thoughts. Thinking of sex to gain a bit of safety was a different matter. Perhaps I could keep them unsure long enough to make a fundamental difference in them.

The staff had been really cowed and I just laid the facts out about how they could stay alive. It wasn't much different from being under Knox and they breathed easier. At least they wouldn't have to fear the irrational behaviour that Knox displayed.

Security was much the same way since they knew that Knox was dead and they had neither a protector nor an employer. This group seemed to accept matters better than the other groups. Being harsh and demanding did a lot to bring this out.

The wounded security people and in fact everybody with some pains came to the meals and had to be treated with whatever some of us were able to give. We treated this like a clinic and Herb put on his PA cap. He was actually fairly good at his profession as well as healing with his mind if Kim and I were near.

We moved into the security house but worked in the main house. The electricians had a tough time dealing with the fact that we just pointed out where the wiring was damaged. Not all of the runs were toast, Mostly it was the appliances at the ends that could not take the overload as well as the wiring could.

Joseph, who I figured was going to die seemed to hang on. He brightened when I came because he wanted to prove me wrong. Herb's bruising healed far quicker than normal and I think it was because of the love Kim and I sent him.

Ellen acted like a much younger woman now. She had lots of energy and spent it doing whatever she could to help. Much of the time she was a surrogate mother to all of us. Even the oldest members deferred to her.

There was a great deal of fighting on the legal front. I had to mobilise all of my forces to fight what the police were trying to do. William and Nicolas spied on the police to find what they were attempting and Tiffany would tell our lawyers. They would no sooner get something signed than we would find a way for a higher judge to stymy them.

We dug up dirt on all the cops, lawyers, and judges the police wanted to use but only in one case did this have to be used.

It was eleven days after our attack that the police were at a loss about what to do. As more and more evidence was removed, we brought in more people to repair and rebuild. At an estimate we did two and three quarters of a million dollars in damage. Some of the figure was in premium wages to get the job done sooner.

The bodies had all been burnt and the kiln dismantled. I hated the thing for what it stood for.

Security exercised all of us and gave weapons training to everybody, including the staff. The staff taught culinary arts and the correct procedure for cleaning a toilet and shower. All the students and sluts became students. After hours they were encouraged to have fun.

Brandon, William, Nicholas, and Anthony played pretty boys and the girls worked hard to seduce them. Since they put on an act to look feminine most of the girls wanted to convert them to lesbianism. This wasn't with their conscious mind but what they felt deep down. The older women, including Ellen, were not immune. The women wore strap-ons and the boys couldn't complain.

It took six days for Herb to take Kim to bed. I stayed away while Kim acted like a woman that had been hurt by her boyfriend. The pain was really there, she just had to let some of it out.

I wasn't quite celibate. I had the pack and Ellen. After some in-depth study we figured that Bobby, Joy, and Missy shouldn't have sex with Ellen. She would love it but at a later date it would start to bother her.

The three youngsters had the rest of the household to chase after and many adults fell to their charms. It was almost comical to see a full grown lesbian feeling great as Bobby thrust his five centimetre cock into her. They weren't threatened by Bobby and he sent such erotic thoughts into their minds that they could do nothing but accept him as their part-time lover.

Melissa was the esper woman dominated by Knox into doing everything Knox wanted. She learned over the telephone that the school had come under attack but nothing else. She was slated to come in to report and pick up her supplies of Abicore in two days.

She came in two days early and frantic. We heard her panic-stricken voice over her encrypted cell phone. Security was at the gate when her car raced in and barely missed one of the stone columns. Behind her car were two others. We were close enough to know that Carstairs and Colins had found out about the training centre and attacked.

There were three men waiting to be tested but I had to hold them off for a while. We weren't prepared to dismantle the site just yet. Melissa's car raced to the house and saw all the trucks for the various trades.

When she slowed down, a security person pointed to the security building. They were very busy thinking of an attack coming and not that Knox was dead. Melissa screeched to a halt only to see Tiffany and two security people in bandages.

I was beside her with a small pistol in my hand before she could break out the back gate or turn around.

"Get out, Melissa."

"Where is Miss Knox?" I had my block up and she had to get out without knowing the truth.

It was after she walked about five paces that she found a mind with the truth. She turned to me and screamed but did nothing else. She was escorted into the building and she didn't fight us in the least. It was if everything she had constructed in her future life had collapsed. It was all built on what Knox was supposedly going to do for her.

Herb and Ellen came running and Herb said, "What's happening?"

"Melissa talked on the phone to us but she wasn't that rational. The camp we were going to take was apparently taken by Carstairs and Colins first."

Herb was quiet because he had counselled me to forget the camp and then forget those in it. He wanted to bury his head in the sand. He had been coming around and I was ok with this because we weren't ready yet.

"So what did they get? Some containers?"

"Let's find out."

I turned to Melissa and said nicely, "Hello, Melissa. My name's Piper. You know a lot about me by now. Tell us what happened."

Her block was up and it was solid. The woman was dressed in expensive clothes. She was good looking as opposed to pretty. Her age was around twenty but I couldn't be sure. I knew exactly how Knox treated her at the start and how she treated her later. My problem was that my estranged husband was close by and I knew he'd object. Our relationship was already strained. If we hadn't been linked so hard I knew that Herb would have left long ago.

I said, "Melissa, we have to have a talk. Just you, me, and Ellen."

Ellen said, "Me!"

I offered her my hand but she just looked at me. She was still stunned that Knox was dead. I moved closer and hit her lightly in the belly. She suddenly glared at me. I tried to exclude everybody else as I pushed into her head the message, "Give my your hand or I'll cause you a world of hurt."

She finally did as I asked and I pulled her to my bedroom. Two security people followed. Ellen was very uncertain. At the doorway I said conversationally to security, "Ellen and I will be busy with the slut for a while. Stay until I say we have come to an understanding."

One said, "Yes, ma'am."

Melissa pulled out of my hand. She was a lot bigger than me. She backed up and I told security, "Shove her into the room."

Herb had time to think and came after us. He was angry. "What are you going to do?"

"I pushed into his mind so Melissa wouldn't hear, "She is a submissive used by Knox. I will be her new dominant."

"You don't need that. I thought I knew you."

"You keep your block up. You have enough drug in you to begin reading minds but you fight it. I want sex with you and some with the pack. This woman has answers. There is the easy way to get them and the hard way. I'm using the easy way. I cannot let her go. She has to join the pack. A submissive will do that."

He hurt me by saying, "You just want sex with her."

Verbally I said, "You're a jealous coward. You refuse to face reality. You think with only a few brain cells and you go by the boy scout ideals that they spoon feed you as you grew up. When are you going to wake up and realise that the world is a cruel place? I'm fighting for more than my life and that of my pack. The world will be forever changed and I have to make sure the transition doesn't leave most of the world dead in a war."

"That's bullshit. Nobody is going to go to war."

"When we talked about this before you were the only one taking that stand. So the world is all wrong and you are the only one that's right?"

"You control them."

"I wondered when that bullshit was going to come out. I'm the leader of a pack. That's like a clan or a war band. I'm the leader but they have their own minds."

"They do what you say."

"Yes, because I'm smart and think. You react like a little boy."

"Yes, a little boy that's going home to mommy."

"And right into the hands of Carstairs and Colins. Don't forget that Colins is a researcher and almost as evil as Knox. You wouldn't stand a chance."

"That company is better than here."

"Do you really think that, Herb, or is your anger speaking?"

"I know what's good for me."

"I'm glad that you've decided. Now I have work to do."

He blurted, "Have fun!"

The security people were worried and shoved Melissa into the room. I came in and said to Ellen, "Close the door!"

I turned to Melissa and snarled, "Take off your clothes, Slut."

She didn't move and I had little to lose. I ran at her and drove my leg into her stomach. She bent over. With my good arm I grabbed her hair and drew back my foot and kicked her in the stomach.

I let her drop and she retched all over the floor. My weapons were here and I took out a lock back knife. Ellen gasped. I reached over and cut the dress and bra strap from the woman. She didn't fight me at all. She was like a lobster and I pulled the garment apart. The panties came next but I had to put my knee on her back.

I threw the knife in the corner and dragged the woman about the room by her hair. In the process all her clothes came off. In a moment I pulled her hair up and yanked off the remnants of her bra.

With my face as close as I could get to her foul smelling mouth I snarled, "That was my husband. If I lose him I'll kill you and do it slowly."

She was still shocked and I stepped back and slapped her face and I guess I got carried away because I did it three more times. The woman was now on her knees crying with her hands protecting her head.

I moved forward again and heard, "Piper!"

My thumb went in the air and Melissa could not see it. I wanted her to think I would kill her.

My hand grabbed her hair and I forced her to look up. I snarled, "I took over all of Knox' assets. I own you body and soul. You are mine to kill, to send to the snuff films, or to service all the old women that need their pussies licked."

She sobbed, "I didn't do anything to you."

"My husband is leaving. You did that. Lower your shield or I'll start branding you."

The shield came down slowly and I began to direct the pack into searching with me. The latest events were the most important but we continued until there wasn't anything strategically important that was left.

It was my job to integrate this woman into the pack. She wasn't a bad woman, simply one who did the bidding of her dom. I didn't need another woman sucking my clit but I figured at some time in the future the pack would start to segregate much like Kim, Herb, and I were supposed to.

I had to have her first though. She had to bend to me as she would bend for the pack.

The security detail was listening for the grunts and groans but there were only a few sobs. Joy came running to me with the toys she appropriated from Knox' room. Security let her past and they grinned at what was going to happen.

My own clothes came off and I hung them on the chair. There was a good sized strap-on that was small enough at one end to go into me. It took a lot of work to get it into place. Joy was more than interested that I be aroused so this would be pleasurable.

Once seated, Joy moved it in and out of me to start my own chimes ringing. I had to pull back from her and the little imp smiled and pushed, "Go get 'em tiger. I want her too."

I walked to the sobbing woman and grabbed a handful of hair. When she looked up, she was shocked to see a large phallus in front of her. I simply said, "Suck!"

The woman took only a few seconds to comply. She went at me. I pulled her forward and this raised her butt. Joy took full advantage of the situation and claimed Melissa's genitals with her hand.

Joy said, "Pull her more."

I did as she asked and Joy went to work. In a moment Joy said, "Knox stretched the hell out of her. I got my hand up her as easy as can be."

"Don't hurt her, honey. She's ours now."

"I know."

I fed erotic scenes to Melissa's brain and it took little time for her to respond. She had a good orgasm and Joy was happy that she had helped it come about.

I pulled out of her mind and said, "On your back and spread wide for your mistress."

She was groggy with her cum but responded quickly. I had an easy time getting in. Ellen was bursting. She wanted desperately to be part of this.

"Ellen! Sit on her face."

"You're — you're raping her."

I reached forward and pinched a nipple hard. Melissa just groaned. "She's the most willing rape victim yet. Get on her face. She has to be broken to fit in the pack."

Ellen was very quick. Her body wanted this desperately even if her mind wasn't sure. The order helped and in a moment she straddled Melissa's mouth. From the look on Ellen's face we both knew that Melissa wanted this.

Joy all of a sudden got in front of me and sat on Melissa. She was small enough to fit. Her hands went to the young woman's clit. I slowed down my quick pace so Joy could help Melissa along again.

Joy pumped images into both Melissa's mind and that of Ellen's. The impressions were far more effective than the more sedate versions I had used. Melissa came violently as did Ellen.

The little girl almost got crushed when Ellen came forward. I rescued her as I laid Ellen down. Joy did such a good job that I kissed her. She deserved everything she got but I had problems that I needed to deal with.

I got a quick shower and jumped into my clothes and raced off. Herb was still in a snit and wanted to go. The pack was nervous and Kim was crying.

Herb had one of the cars in front of the house. Bobby was crying and pushing Herb away from the vehicle with little success. I was sure that Herb was upset about leaving and it had to be his pride that was making him go.

Kim was pounding the thoughts into him that she was positive she was pregnant. When I approached, Herb stopped and looked at me. "Did you beat and rape her?"

"Are you man enough to find out what she's like now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. Melissa had her underpinnings ripped out from under her. Her entire future was based on what Knox would reward her with. I gave her back some of that support. She has a family to care for her. She needs it in this world."

"You're saying she wants to stay?"

"Why listen to me talk? Take a look for yourself. Find out if she wants to stay or not. Offer her a ride out of here with you."

"She'd take it. You had a gun on her."

"Words are cheap. Prove it!"

Herb stalked back into the building but slowed down the further he went. The guards were still there and came to attention as we approached. Herb actually stopped and slowly peeked in.

I caught up and opened the door. Melissa was now on top, riding Ellen's lips. Joy was behind Melissa pushing a small toy into her butt. None of the participants even knew we were here. There was a lot of grunting and groaning.

Herb was very shocked and just stared for a few moments. Finally he looked back at me and said, "Is that Ellen under there?"

"She's doing her part to show her love to a new pack member."

Herb just turned back and looked. Joy finally turned this way and smiled. She said to me, "Hubby has a club in his pocket."

"Maybe it's my turn now?"

"Go for it or lose him."

I moved forward and put my arm around Herb. He jumped a bit but not much. He got back to staring at the two women and one young girl earning an Academy Award for what she was doing.

My hand caressed his bulge and now his attention was in two directions. It took a while to get his belt undone and his pants down. I took little time to get on my knees and try to pop him into my mouth.

He was trying to fight me but his hormones were getting the better of him. It wasn't that much longer that I had him on the floor and I was sitting proud on my steed. It was only seconds later that he pushed violently into me and unloaded. I caressed his chest and kept moving. He actually stayed hard.

I hadn't been watching Joy and all of a sudden she sat on Herb's face.



"What are you doing?"

"He wanted me. He has such lust but he keeps it locked up. I just gave him what he wants and it's too late to turn back.

"Don't hurt him."

"I won't, Piper."



This time Joy was giving Herb and me her images. They started with a mad coupling but full of love. When I was getting close to the peak she showed me with a bloated abdomen. This is what I wanted. It was also what Herb wanted because his shield came down and he held my legs tightly as he pounded up into me and unloaded once more.

Beside us I heard two screams. One was slightly muffled. Two people were very happy as they clung to each other.

I hugged Herb as Ellen turned around to hug and kiss Melissa. Joy got off her mount with a satisfied grin and said, "His beard's scratchy but I like it. Can I get some more later?"

I looked into Herb's mind again. He had a soft spot or rather a hard spot for all the girls. I looked deeper and saw all his irrational fears that had to do with me going crazy and him losing both of us. It was he that was leaving, not us.

I loved the man even though he was unimproved.

"I'm not that unimproved you know."

"You can read minds now?"

"I just started. You're one special lady. I can see in your mind how I acted. I was stupid or worse."

"That's what it's like in the pack. We can borrow brains so even a newbie can come to the right conclusion."

"Will you forgive me — wife?"

"If you eat my pussy."



-------

Chapter 11


"I need forgiveness something awful."

I moved position and even though I was juicy he dug right in. It was starting to get interesting when I saw Ellen and Melissa eye Herb's slowly growing member.

I said, "Melissa, suck on Herb for a minute. He likes you too."

"Yes, Mistress." She liked to use the term and I kinda' liked it too.

She did this very tentatively. She had very little interaction with men because they usually abused her. She licked to get a taste and then went back to work. Ellen was almost green with envy and in a moment Melissa pulled off Herb and pushed Ellen down. She only fought for a fraction of a second and then sucked Herb in like a pro.

I looked into Herb's mind. He told himself that he couldn't see so it had to be Melissa still sucking on him. Deep inside he liked what his grandmother was doing to him.

I passed the information on to Ellen and she started to really work on Herb. There was movement and Herb's knees came up and I could feel in his mind how a finger was slipping into his bowels.

Moments later Herb was ready to erupt and I beamed as many images as I could into Melissa and Ellen and they came only a few seconds after Herb. I guess it was exciting for me because I came too.

Herb hurried to turn me around so he could kiss me. In a moment he also saw Ellen and Melissa passing his semen back and forth with their mouths.

"She doesn't look like she needs rescuing."

"Not any more but I plan on breeding her soon if I can find a stud that will impregnate her for us." This was not a cruel jest but something Melissa wanted but had never expressed.

All of a sudden I had a lot of very aroused people looking at me.

-------

Herb slept with us that night. Everything felt right with the world apart from imminent doom falling upon us. Colins and Carstairs had two functional espers but little Abicore. The drug had been in Colins' hands before and he had no doubt done some research on it. It wasn't that complicated to make because we did it.

When we had last read Colins' thoughts we knew he wanted to keep the secret. The men we ran into knew nothing of the importance of the drug. The secret might be held by one man or just a select few.

The end result was that a competent researcher knew about the specifics of the drug. It was a given that the two espers would talk under torture of the effects of a truth drug.

They knew lots about Knox' organisation and Colins would dig it all out. The first time we met a threat by taking Knox' money and running. Living in fear was something I didn't plan on doing for the rest of my life.

Colins would see us as competition to control the drug and want to kill or capture us. We were also a threat to his organisation because of what we knew. Even though they knew a lot about us they would still worry and do something. I would rather attack them than to have them come here. If I could I would kill all of them and work slowly to bring the drug to the world.

Melissa was accepted by the pack. Bobby wanted to do all sorts of interesting things to her as did Missy and Joy. The woman did not really object to the thoughts because there was a sort of love behind the ideas.

Now that Herb and Ellen were starting to read minds we let them learn about Melissa's ability. I could float and drift much better than she could but I let her demonstrate this.

Ellen said, "My god! How can she do that?" Herb's shield immediately went up because he was so shocked.

We talked about Melissa's ability for an hour. None of us admitted to being able to do interesting things at this time. Bobby and Joy threw stones at Melissa and they bounced off the shield she formed. We found a length of lumber and ran at Melissa with it. She was pushed back so she was anchoring it to herself instead of the ground around her.

When Melissa was flustered or worried the shield didn't form. She would not be able to use it in a stressful situation. We studied the workings of it.

The tracking ability was explained but there was little we could do to experiment with it.

I said, "Tell us about the two espers." We were trying to get Melissa's feelings on the matter instead of formulating our own opinions from the data she had in her mind.

"Emily had a hard life. She tries to be nice but her true feelings come out. She is not energetic and hates all sorts of authority. She likes girls but turns this around by hating lesbians or even bisexuals. I had a hard time getting her to work. I just tell her what Miss Knox wanted but she did nothing. She can float very well and do it up to four metres high but her strength is in broadcasting fear. Miss Knox wanted this ability to increase but she didn't work at this with a wish to succeed."

I asked, "What could she do to help Colins?"

"I see what he's like in your mind. He'll beat and torture her. He won't let her get away from him. She will learn to obey quickly. She can track fairly well but she has to focus on the target first. She could be a good warning device for him if she tried. She doesn't like guns and noise so she might not be able to function during a fight. Flying may allow her to see people coming but she can't do it if she's frightened."

Melissa went on and discussed incidental points about Emily. Afterwards we started to ask questions. Melissa was upset because she couldn't answer all of them. Ellen hugged the woman and she tried again to help us.

Later she said, "Andrew can float and somehow he's pretty fast now. He can see through walls. We found out that Miss Knox knew of this ability but never told us anything about it. He's a poor tracker. He likes to shoot. He also likes to frighten people to make himself feel superior. He has sex with Emily but he isn't very good. He's lazy. He hates, with a passion, the people that sent him to Miss Knox. He wants to kill them and he even dreams about it. I guess we all want revenge but he wants them to suffer a lot."

I said, "It seems he will fit in well with Colins and Carstairs."

"I think so. They're good at chasing me and I only got away because I wasn't at the site at the time and because they knew where I would go to get away. I used their own knowledge against them."

"Knox attacked that house before. We didn't think it was their main base."

"I don't know about that but they were strengthening it. I don't think you want to attack them there." She read my mind for the answer and said, "But I guess you have to anyway. You're probably right. They will be attacking you soon."

"Melissa, it's all of us that will be attacked. You're part of the pack now. You've found a place here."

A big smile came on her face and a bit more of the structure that supported her ego firmed up.

I turned to Herb and said, "Melissa isn't the only one who can levitate."

"Who else can?"

"Bobby, Joy, Dina, and I can do it too."

He just looked at me. His block went up. I asked verbally, "Did I frighten you?"

It took a while and his face changed expression. "A little maybe. I don't understand any of this."

"Then lower your block so we can talk." When he did I said, "I said this to you before. Our world had many more dimensions than the three we can perceive. When they learn this fact most people tend to deny the idea because it disturbs them. When they see something that contradicts their simplistic comprehension of physics they blot the image out of their mind as impossible."

I added seriously, "As the father of my children, it's up to you to try harder than most people to grasp what is being learned."

I smiled and levitated ten centimetres and kissed the stunned man in front of me. He didn't respond to the kiss at all. Then I leaned back, moved away from him and made a circle around him. The next time around I did Bobby's version of the 'moon walk' where I went backwards while appearing to walk forwards.

When I stood in front of him again I said, "Don't play cards when you gamble with Kim. She's one of those people you hear about in tests that can read the cards you have, not your thoughts about them." This was something perhaps more familiar to him as he had read about it in books on ESP.

He thought, "Does that mean she can see through walls?" His shield wasn't activated and I knew he was still worried.

"Not yet, but think on this. You're the next best thing to a doctor. What if Kim looked into a patient and gave you the info you needed to remove a tumour, bullet, or fragments of bone. Think of what this could do for you if you developed this skill. You could operate through a small incision and not be as intrusive on your patient."

"I can't operate. I'm not a doctor."

"You could be if we have no other threats."

Herb thought about it. He wanted to help people without spending too many years in school. He had already spent five years though some of it was only night school and summer semesters.

He said, "I see you think I should go for it."

"Only because I see in your mind that you want it. It might be fun to have more doctors in the family. Kim was thinking of doing this and this was before she could see the front of cards."

"What about you?"

"I like helping people but I want to work with drugs. I was going to specialise in finance but Nicolas is too good. We can work together and make some discoveries that will benefit mankind."

Herb liked this and saw that I was aware of this fact. He just accepted it like the rest of the pack did.

He said, "How do I learn to see through skin and bone?"

"We haven't found out quite yet. We get hints from those that can do it and try to copy them. All I can say is try it. Do you want to take a look at what I've found so far?"

"Sure."

Herb looked through my mind and I thought of what I had learned. I also presented him with all the minor and major skills that Nicolas, Brandon, and Anthony could do. He stopped and studied Pete's ability to tell somebody that he wasn't there and then Melissa's when he found out she could form a shield. He had already seen Brandon's strength but hadn't understood what it was.

The final set of images showing our research into healing was presented slowly and in detail. Tiffany was good at it and we were getting better ourselves. Ellen also seemed to show some talent.



"You can heal people that well?"

"You got a lot of attention from us."

"I know that. My bruises left much quicker than they should have. I see that Joseph may pull through."

"He will and in a way I'm glad he didn't die. He was a nasty person when we found him. He has been around us long enough to get some feedback about his previous actions. He now sees the error of his ways. Before there was a negative reinforcement which pushed him the other way."

"So, is he going to join the pack?"

"He has to. The positive reinforcement has to continue. We can't have rogues doing harm to civilisation."

"You sound like one of those world leaders that try to appear concerned but I know you really are. What are you going to do with the pack?"

"I'm the leader in a way but I'm actually the spearhead that the pack pushes forward. I can shift the pack but they are the strength and provide the basic direction."

"Where does that leave you and me?"



I read his thoughts better and said, "We're forming a family within the pack. We have to interact within the pack to a small degree but we're already starting to segregate. The older boys like each other's bums but each would like a female of their own. Each woman would be a sort of wife. So far they have being working Ellen over quite well."



"Ellen!"

"Four horny boys poking her all the time makes for a happy woman."

"I — I thought she was trying the girls."

"She did that when she was young. She still likes girls but she's basically more interested in guys."

"What about Melissa? Ellen likes her a lot."

"Melissa is the easiest. She likes everybody and responds to love and affection. She will be part of the mortar that holds the pack together. I wasn't joking because she wants your child too. She may even have children by other members."



Herb was a little shocked. "She sounds like a baby making machine."

"This is where she binds the pack. She accepts the males and the females. She even likes the dogs but not sexually. The dogs like her in return. All this and she hasn't had that much of a chance to get to know anybody."

Herb said, "She's smart but not as smart as you. You started out smarter. Do you think it has to do with taking the drug directly?"



"I believe that the indirect method is best. It's also slower. Another factor is that I'm still growing. She took the drug too late in life."

"So I won't get that smart?"

"The slow way is best. We also made a revision of our own to Abicore. Ours is stronger and longer lasting."

"Was it wise to take a new drug?"

"The discovery was serendipitous. We took it unknowingly at first. I think you're coming along faster than I did with the older drug."

"I'd love to learn how to heal."

"Then give it a shot. Kim's still hurt and I'm not 100%. Let's try."



Kim was busy but was very happy to join us. We sat on the living room floor in a equilateral triangle. Kim asked, "What do you want me to do?"

Herb said, "Better ask Piper."

"How about you look into your leg and see where the damage is. We'll try to piggyback on so we can see."

"Ok."

Kim did the looking and Herb and I viewed what she saw. This was difficult for Herb because he hadn't tried to mesh so close before. It was almost twenty minutes before he could do it on his own. We could feel his pride in this. We supported him without being condescending.

When he mastered it to the extent he could we tried healing what we saw as wrong or not finished. This was tiring for us but we stayed at the job until we just had to quit. I was surprised to see that hours had passed and there was a noticeable improvement in Kim's leg.

Herb got up with difficulty and helped both of us up. It was nice to have a strong man around the house to take care of a girl when she needed it.

Herb said to my inner thoughts, "I have quite a few strengths as well."

We were worried about Colins. He was going to learn nearly everything and come looking for us. But he might not think that we would attack first. So far he had been the aggressor and we had just reacted.

Missy was at the strategy meeting and I asked, "Missy, will you look in Melissa's mind and get a feeling for Emily and Andrew."

Melissa could more readily think of Emily when Missy tried to snuggle up to the image. It worked better when she snuggled up to Melissa too. Finally Missy's arm came up and pointed. The direction was in the direction of Carstairs' base. If I had a compass, I would be even more sure.

Knox had good maps of the base since she attacked it once and got shot for her trouble. Digitised versions were copied from Knox's DVD's to our own. Oddly, Missy could even point to where Emily was on the property and we found this revelation very interesting.

Herb seemed more committed now and talked with the group so we had his input. We had to assume that there were at least a dozen adversaries to deal with. Since we had one person from security that had been on that raid we got an idea of how the house was defended and how Knox attacked it.

We made our own tentative plans based on the failed one. Actually, it didn't fail because Knox people had taken the house. She just found few people in it and all of them were dead or dying.

She had to be carried to the house at the time. In a fit of anger she shot the last survivor. When she was treated by her own doctor for the gunshot wound she had gone into an even worse fit when she learned that we had all fled. Knox even had to be sedated when she found her money gone and the tax people knocking on her door.

Later that night a phone call came. It was Colins by the sound of his voice. He wanted to talk to Knox.

Ellen told him, "Miss Knox is taking a short vacation. Do you wish to leave a message?"

There was a pause and Colins said, "Tell her that her good friend Gordon has something she lost. Tell her that I appreciate what she has done to further my fortunes."

"Is that all, Sir?"

"No. Tell her that paybacks are a bitch."

"Very well, Sir."

Herb said, "He expects an attack. He was egging her on."

I said, "We better do something but it can't be done prematurely."

"I don't know yet but I'm willing to bet that this house is watched even closer now. We can sneak out in one of the construction trucks. Some of us should go out and see what the watcher's know."

Part of the pack left in a plumbing truck and came back several hours later. The neighbourhood was patrolled but nobody was found. This could only mean that cameras were used from a distance.

Just when we were going to give up a cable company truck drove into the area with two men in it. Before they stopped we knew we had found somebody at last. They stopped to inspect a junction box and then the man on the ladder went higher and fiddled at the very top of the pole. We read his thoughts about replacing a camera that was reported to be defective. He talked on the phone until the camera was aimed where somebody wanted.

Before the two left, we had a thorough understanding of the preparations made for Knox.

There were only twelve people involved. The two espers were in separate cells in the basement. A team of two guarded the house and four more slept or stood down. Three two man teams patrolled the area. Colins would seldom be around. Carstairs was out looking for more people to hire. He was expected back in a day or two. There was no mention of telepathy so the secret wasn't out yet.

Herb said, "Now's the time to hit them. Knox couldn't get a team set up this quickly and Carstairs will be back soon with more people."



"Knox? I'm paranoid when it comes to safety now. I could tell you that we are going on vacation tomorrow and send you out to buy some food. They read your mind and figure we are going on vacation."

"So?"

"So, what I told you was what I wanted the opposition to believe."

"They can't read minds."

"Who says? Colins may have taken the drug. If he threatened Emily and Andrew they would cooperate. But the fact is that Colins knows that we can read minds."

"So he wants us to attack and his forces are superior to what those two men were told?"

"That's what I think."

"So what are we going to do?"

"We do the unexpected."



We started to train but it wasn't just calisthenics on the lawn. We studied Pete's ability much more closely. We meshed with his body and mind as well as we could while he tried to send out the thoughts that he wasn't here. After a long time Kim and I could do it but not to anybody that had our abilities. But most or all of Carstairs people wouldn't be able to read minds.

Melissa's shield was a great idea but it had to be a lot stronger to stop bullets. We meshed with her and I think it was the way she invited us in because we got closer and learned more. Apart from Joseph, Pete, Laura, Ellen, and Herb, we all had some ability. The ability only worked up to something with a mass of ten grams and only lightly tossed.

We used the same procedure with Brandon but only William and his favourite girl, Tatum, showed any aptitude.

We were luckier at levitation. Pete, Laura, William again, and Kim could do it along with Bobby, Joy, Dina, and me.

I meshed with everybody to try to share my speed but nobody was able to catch on. We tried the healing and found that Tiffany did even better when she was with Kim, Herb, and me. Ellen had improved but wasn't as good as any of us alone. I hoped that Melissa could do it but there was no luck in this case.

During all the preparation we still had to manage our stolen empire. The lawyers and accountants were working to find a way that would hurt us the least when the property was moved to our names. Getting lawyers to go along without Knox' signature or even her saying what she wanted done was very difficult.

We had dirt on all the lawyers and we got a fresh supply when they visited. Private investigators found more information such as copied transcripts, photos, and affidavits from witnesses. In some cases we could even find the bodies but they were left where they had been buried.

They supplied all the paperwork we needed and Tiffany acted as Knox' legal representative. Some property had to stay in Knox' name for a while so we could shift assets and go bankrupt. Those in the know had been doing this for centuries.

The companies owned by Knox but listed on paper as owned by others were a different matter. Knox had made sure she was protected because each of the people had signed a paper saying they owed millions to Knox' holding corporation in the form of loans that had not come due yet. If somebody wanted to leave with the assets Knox would either kill them or hit them with the papers saying they defaulted on the loan. We now had papers to show that the corporation belonged to us. There was no profit made so there was no trouble with the tax man. In fact he had not found this corporation when he came looking for money a year ago.

Inertia was in our favour now. Most people thought Knox was alive and they did what they had been told to do. Going against Knox was not conducive to good health. In time those people would start to stray without Knox coming down to put fear into them.

I knew that we were going to replace some of the upper echelon. To find out who they were we invited the executives to a hotel and went through their heads.

Cathy Keep was the madam of a whorehouse. She came in with her books and expected to find Knox.

Ellen, Tiffany, and Laura met her. Tiffany said brusquely, "Have a seat Ms Keep."

She was a good looking woman but with hard features and an equally hard mind. She didn't sit. "I expected to see Miss Knox."

Tiffany's face showed controlled fury and said, "We purchased some of her assets. You now work for us or you hit the street."

"Prove it. Anybody can make claims."

Tiffany looked at Ellen and Ellen reached into her briefcase and handed over a few sheets of papers. Keep went through them and looked up to say, "Why wasn't I told that the business was to be sold?"

Tiffany said, "I didn't want it mentioned. Things go missing in a transition like this and I wanted to keep it to a minimum."

"I thought Miss Knox would have the decency to talk to me about it."

"Sheila's a sociopath. She understands how to deal with people only as an abstract concept. I'm a realist. We start with some trust both ways. I will want to check the girls to see that they are being taken care of."

"I treat them very well."

"You may, but merchandise has to be examined when a new owner takes over."

"When is this to take place?"

"When we leave here. Unexpected audits are best from my standpoint."

"I'd like to talk to Miss Knox."

"Actually, I'd like to as well. She has been having difficulties and decided to stay out of sight for a while."

"What difficulties?"

"Oh, just people trying to kill her."

Keep paused to think. "How can I reach her?"

"She may have left the country. She's too paranoid to trust anyone with her itinerary. I'd like to see the books now. My bookkeepers get impatient and then angry."

Keep opened up her own briefcase and produced three books. We did not have to go through them because we knew what irregularities we would find from the woman's mind.

Ellen found the first attempt to hide funds and pounced unmercifully on Keep. This went on for ten minutes. Keep was a strong woman but she was shaking now. Laura found the next and the two of them almost had the hard bitten madam crying. Knowing just what buttons to push made the job easier.

We all went in Cathy Keep's car so she couldn't use a cell phone. We came to a fairly ritzy neighbourhood. On the edge of it was an expensive restaurant that was well known in the city. It just happened to have many small private rooms.

Knox had thankfully instituted a blood test for all patrons that wished to take advantage of the specialised service. In half an hour even a stranger could be checked for any infections. The girls had to undergo this same test every two weeks.

Cathy asked, "What would you like to see first?"

Ellen said, "The other set of books you keep in the office, the whereabouts of three girls sent to you, and the four others you picked up yourself against the original agreement."

Cathy was sweating now. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you do. We did a lot of investigating before we bought. Come clean now and we won't be that angry. Stonewall us and we'll tell Knox how she was cheated out of her share all along. If I know Knox, she'll find a way of getting her money's worth."

It didn't take much convincing before we saw the books. Drugs were in the safe too and Ellen said, "Get rid of these and don't bring any more in here. If the customers want some, let them go elsewhere."

Cathy Keep was cowed and took the packages with a nod of her head. The books were inspected and even these supposedly honest books had irregularities. The staff of the restaurant were shuttled through a private meeting. They were asked fairly innocuous questions like, 'how do you like working here' or 'what are your hobbies and aspirations'.

The questions got more graphic until they were asked, "What do you think your future in the sex trade is?"

The original idea was to shut this place down but that would cause many problems. Brothels and prostitution should be completely legalised and taxed. The counties in Nevada where there were brothels also had the least amount of sex crimes in that state. Some women had little else they could do. Surprisingly, some women liked the opportunity to have sex many times a day.

The pack had a vote and we were going to keep this place open. Those that didn't fit in here might find a job other than on their backs. This would give us some problems because a few women were good at nothing else than to be a sex object.

The questions only served to make our assessments clearer and quicker. Seven girls had been sold to women that wanted the girls full time. We weren't going to get these girls back to assess them so we got addresses.

There were rules made by Knox and those made by Keep. We altered them where it was warranted. The girls ranged from thirty, who weren't really girls, to as young as twelve. They wanted more free time and everything else any person or child would want. Knox had at least insisted they make something of themselves by encouraging them to learn more.

The customers were most often regulars. They were assessed and some were sadistic. Some girls had a masochistic streak but it was the normal girls that were targeted because of their reaction to pain.

In the process we had a meal delivered and found the food excellent. The staff was assessed but here we had to go into the kitchen. Tiffany was not a restauranteur but she knew that the business was losing money because it was too small. This might be good to hide a brothel but bad as a restaurant. Besides, bigger meant more customers and an easier time to hide here for a few hours.

Back in Cathy's office Tiffany said, "Overall, you don't do too bad. Your honesty has been proved lacking but we will still give you a chance to redeem yourself."

"Thank you — madam."

"You now have a chance to cost me a lot of money. I want you to find a way of expanding or relocating. For the restaurant, I'd like to see four times the seating area and another area with a patio. A trellis with grapes sounds nice. The dormitory room for each girl has to be enlarged and the dormitory increased by ten more rooms. I want a gym and an indoor pool. The girls will be provided with personal trainers and teachers."

"That will cost millions."

"I know. This property is worth a lot. You have good food and succulent flesh. The customers will come to get both.

"Your reward for working with me honestly will be ten percent of net and no other pay apart from free lodgings and meals. Since it will take time to become profitable you will get your standard pay until you ask for the new protocol to come into effect. An independent accountant will come and review the books. I feel that your salary will double in two years and triple in four."

"You'd trust me after I stole from Miss Knox?"

"I said we would start with trust. Knox was nasty when crossed. I'm going to be worse."

"Thank you, thank you. I don't know what to say."

"I have bad news too. Janet and Sandy are to be given jobs as maids. Edna, the maid, will be given a chance to get back to her old job."

"That will be difficult because those two are popular."

"We will send replacements. Think of this as a vocational school. The students will come and some will graduate."

"I never thought of that."

"It gives a new meaning to the term 'Sex Education'."

The next day the three member team visited the Jamieson Clinic. With them were two lawyers and both represented some of Knox' interests as well as those of the clinic.

Lucy Maddison, the president was floored when she found out that the business was sold out from under her. The upper echelon was here and learned the same thing. They were given the opportunity to look over the change of the loan. Everything else was irrelevant because the mortgage on the building, land, and equipment was held by a company that was in turn held by the holding company we now owned.

Nancy Jacobus and Nancy Paddock were in charge of their own departments. They were also lovers with Lucy Maddison and the president's live in secretary, Lily. They had a lot of questions but the transaction itself was simple. It was the one who owned the loan that really controlled the company.

When the lawyers left, Tiffany said, "I mentioned before that nothing will change but I want you to start taking in youngsters and train them. Think of them as apprentices. They can graduate to technicians."

Lucy Maddison said, "We don't have enough work to warrant that kind of expenditure."

"Write it off under training. If the cost gets excessive I'll adjust your pay. The bonus system is still in effect but not necessarily the same."

"We're still doing work for Knox."

"Then she'll have to pay for it. She owns nothing in this company. You may admire the woman but remember that she is now an outsider. Make a cost estimate of what you have done and will do. Tack on thirty percent."

"That's not great but it's fair. I want to talk to Miss Knox about this loan transfer and negotiate for the work."

"You can try but she's been threatened again. She's still in the city but stays away from her home. We can't call her, she calls us. She is well aware that a cell phone call can be traced."

Five chic clothing stores, two shoe stores, an art gallery, a plastics manufacturing plant, another restaurant, a chemical supply firm, and two large hotels were owned openly by one of Knox' corporations. The hotels required much more of the lawyers time than all the rest. They, like Jamieson Clinic, were worth many millions of dollars.

The lawyers were giving us troubles again about Knox not being seen in public. I asked one of them, "What if Knox was seen in the city going to some of the places she owns?"

"That would make our lives simpler. Do you have a person that looks like her?"

"No, but we can make someone up to look like her. You can get a witness that never saw Knox before see that she signed some documents."

"That's what we hoped but if someone questions it a photograph of Miss Knox will be shown and then the signature brought into question."



-------

Chapter 12


We needed more information on the site we were going to attack. It was now five days since Colins first phoned. He called again demanding to talk to Knox. Ellen was prepped for this and gave him a scathing reply that would have made Knox proud if she was alive.

It was witty and loaded with invectives including how low on the evolutionary ladder Colins was and how he had to stoop to rape or seek charity to get fucked.

William and Laura followed Colins but he now had a shield up similar to what Knox had erected. Eventually, they got close enough to pierce the shield but not very well. Andrew had gone to Stethbridge with Colins. Both men had gloated as women critical of Colins were transferred and those that had helped Knox were fired if at all possible.

A few had their pasts raked over and Colins used this to get them to bend over his desk as he hammered their asses. I figured if he got rid of everybody critical of him he would be working alone.

Since we had not taken the bait it would be natural to assume that Colins would attack. We countered this by hiring a security company that was composed of younger men that broke arms on occasion.

Trying to find mercenaries was difficult. Carstairs had picked through all that he could find. He didn't want the ones that were left and neither did I.

That night Pete, Laura, Herb, and I left to check Carstairs' stronghold as two separate teams. It was a way of saying I trusted them and to tell the truth I did. They had become part of the pack and I wondered how it had happened. I tried to see if we had changed a bit but it didn't look like it. They had changed to fit in a solid family unit. Perhaps this is what people were always looking for and angry at if they didn't find it. The rest wanted to go too but it was better for just two groups. Herb and Laura rented cars and we headed for Carstairs place.

Herb said to me as he drove, "You have vivid memories of going to this place last time. I see everything you did and how you felt when you had to kill a human being."

"It hurt for weeks after but I found a way of justifying it in my mind. Something similar was in your mind when you rescued Kim and I that day."

"With me it wasn't much different. You were rescuing pack. They were close to you, basically family. I was helping two beautiful girls that were crying out for help. I was in danger of losing two people that I knew would be closer to me than any one had ever been before."

I could joke about this but he was telling the exact truth. Pack was like that because they couldn't escape into delusions like most people. If you shaded something to make it more comfortable you were shown just how you manipulated things for your own ends. I felt humbled to be a part of this love and did my part to nurture what we had.

I said, "Killing became easier when I could see how twisted and deformed some people were. Threatening the pack made it easier still. It makes me feel sick after because I'm reminded that this was what Knox was like."



"I might feel worried about you finding it easier but I can see what you mean while normals could never do that."

"You sound like you've accepting your place in the pack and the way it works."

"I have. Two beautiful young ladies can do that to a man. We fit together in this odd way we do, plus they want my children. How could I refuse?"

"You think with your testicles."

"I am what I am but love overshadows everything."

"I know, honey. Kim and I feel the same way. Sometimes lust gives love a run for its money."

"Don't forget, I can read minds too. You have a lot of lust when you let yourself go."

"Maybe one day I can relax more often."



We soon had to put our blocks up. Herb had taught me how he did it and then the pack worked on the procedure to hone it. Herb got better as did the rest of us.

There was a side road we hoped was far enough away not to be monitored by Carstairs or the two espers. Pete and Laura parked behind us and we all got out.

There was no thoughts transmitted and no need for vocal communications. We were in receptive mode. This was opposed to a full block. Sam had taught us that thoughts could kill and we were preparing a defence even if we couldn't use this method.

With nobody around we rose a few centimetres into the air and leaned forward. We drifted forward about as fast as we could run. It looked effortless but it took just as much energy. All except Herb could fly but he could get off the ground. To us, flying meant leaving the ground by more than a metre. Bobby could go kilometres up because of his size and weight but we couldn't go that far. He was also a showoff and this pushed him to expanding his limits.

Cars drove by infrequently and we took to the trees to hide until they passed.

Herb said, "I have to rest." We all stopped where we were and he said, "Thanks, guys. I thought I was strong but you guys are more capable than I am."

I held his hand and said, "You just started. You're doing great."

Herb gave me a kiss. His shield was strong but I could wiggle between the cracks and saw that he wanted to do a lot more than give me a kiss. I wouldn't mind that in the least but we had a job to do.

Ten minutes later we settled on the road again to rest. Laura said, "I can't detect much but I think Emily is there."

I said, "I can't sense her at all."

"I know the woman."

"Any idea on the numbers?"

"I'd have to guess. Probably a dozen."

"So they're still hoping we take the bait."

Pete and Laura flew the remainder of the way to the house at four metres. Herb and I stood back with some rifles and night scopes. The two were only gone for five minutes.

Laura said, "It was good we flew. There are seismic sensors to pick up a person walking. Motion detectors and infrared cameras are all over. The sensors are mounted so rabbits don't trip them. There have been hundreds of false alarms from the animals. Stay below a metre and off the ground and you are reasonably safe. We got a location for the cameras positions so we knew where not to go."

Herb asked, "What about any wandering patrols?"

"They're monitored too. We ran across two groups but they don't suspect mind reading."

I asked Herb, "Do you want to go, honey?"

"Sure. All I have to do is learn to float horizontally."

"Well, give it a try."

Herb laid down and tried to alter his ability to raise his body. He was not that good at staying level. He had the power but not the control.

After ten minutes, I said, "I have an idea."

"What is it, sweetie?"

I took off my boots and then the dark camo pants. My legs were white and easier to see. My panties came off next. The boots went back on.

It was easy to see that all three were interested. I laid on the ground with my rolled up clothes on my chest. "Like the airline, fly united."

Herb, as usual, was thinking with his lower brain but I loved that brain too. Herb gave up resisting and lowered his pants to his ankles and walked on his knees to get close. I got a nice kiss and my lover worked his way in. I was ready enough to accept him when he entered.

Herb gave a few thrusts and I had to hold him still. I had to think and I couldn't do a good job if my husband was pounding away.

I said, "That's good, now let me do the control. Keep your butt under the dangerous area."

"I thought my other end was in the dangerous area."

"Not now, I have a headache."

"My head aches too."

It took me almost ten minutes to keep us level but we flew quite easily. Herb gave some of the lift and all the thrust. I was the pilot. We went through the trees and avoided the brambles and the weeds. They wouldn't have been kind to my bare butt.

Herb would thrust slowly all the time but we were still able to concentrate on the job. In one patch there were cattails. No sensors there but they dragged along between my cheeks and abused the little baby makers of Herbs. I concentrated a little harder and we went up to four metres. Pete and Laura flew beside us. I only got smiles but it would be nice to know what they were thinking.

That man of mine started going faster and I had to work harder to stay airborne. We landed in one of the few safe spots. As I settled on the grass Herb started working harder. We pounded together for five minutes and I nearly passed out with the intensity of what he did to me. It took a few minutes to recover and a few more to get dressed.

The orgasm was good enough that it took a while to could function. Emily was here alright and asleep. That wasn't true about all the rest. We searched minds but it took a long time to sift through them all. We just dug for tidbits.

Emily was our best source and I tried working my way into her mind as stealthy as I could. She was having a dream. Her drunken father was hitting her because she hadn't done well in school.

I saw an opportunity here and pushed harder and tried to integrate myself into not only her mind but her dream. I remembered my own father beating me so I used a tennis racket to beat Emily's father until he fled.

Emily's dream self said, "Who are you?"

"I'm your fairy godmother."

"No, you're not. You're younger than me."

"My magic makes me young. Now, do you want to argue because if you do I'm leaving."

"Don't go!"

I helped Emily up and took her to the main bathroom and took off her clothes. She went into the bathtub and I washed her hair and then her skin. Back in her room, I rubbed her vigorously. Even in her dream, she groaned. She just wanted the human contact. My hands went to her back and I massaged her. This was even better, she thought.

I caused new clothes of my choosing to appear. I dressed the girl and treated her like a mother should. When she sat up at my urging, I said, "You need to work harder at school. I'll be proud of you if you do."

"Will I get a prince and a carriage?"

"I can give you a carriage but the prince has to be just a wonderful guy. Living happily ever after is a possibility."

"I'd love that, but work is so hard."

"You're a smart girl. You just don't have the right encouragement. I have a family for you. They will love and protect you but you have to help yourself. Lots of stories say that the heroine has to do something very hard to get what she wants, don't they?"

"Yes, some of them."

"Well, here's your chance. Think of what's right not what you're told. I'll be watching out for you just like Santa. He keeps a score for toys. I'll keep a score to see if you can make it to this family. They don't want just anybody. They want somebody that'll work hard with them."

"I can do that."

"I know you can, honey. I have faith in my little girl."

"Will you protect me if I need it?"

"I have other little boys and girls to take care of. All I can do is try. It's really hard with so many. Fairies are all overworked."

She could tell I wanted to go and became upset. I bent over and kissed the girl and petted the back of her hair. "Remember, honey, do what's right, not necessarily what you're told."

"I'll do that."

"Good, now think what it would've been like in school if you had really tried to get ahead."

"Ok."

I shrunk my figure and pulled out of her mind. Herb had been shaking me. When I looked at him, he said, "A patrol is coming this way. Let's get out of here."

With my own mind I searched for the threat. Two men were coming along what was a long route. It was a convoluted maze. They weren't worried abut anything at this time.

I said, "We have five minutes. Open your fly for me."

"Piper! We have to get out of here."

"Don't argue with your wife."

The lower brain came to the rescue and I was on my knees waiting. When I had him nice and hard, I said, "Lay down on your back."

"Piper!"

"Do it, honey."

He got down but so did his erection. I had to get that part back up. At the same time I was undoing my own pants. I was juicy with semen from earlier so I slipped on easily. This time it only took a minute for us to get airborne. We went up to four metres and sped away toward our cars.

I was sitting upright and it took a while to get my boots off and tie the laces together with my pants and soaked panties. We made it all the way to the car this time and we didn't need a rest.

Now Herb got a wet bum on the grass as I pounded away. My clit hit just right and the feelings carried over to Herb. We both had a nice cum. A kilometre away another woman was getting lucky but they wanted a little privacy.

We drove back with Herb's fingers soaking because of a possible strain he might have had. We pulled over twice just so I could reduce the swelling in his pants.

The report had gone out before we got home. Kim was one horny girl and dragged us to our bedroom. She sat on Herb and I sat on his lips and we drifted all over the room. When we came, we only fell a few centimetres onto the throw rug. Poor Herb was running on empty and Kim was angry that I had it all. To shut her up I pushed her on her back and went to work between her legs. She didn't shut up but she wasn't complaining any more.

There wasn't enough information in the brains of those at the house. We had to find Carstairs. If he had a block it was a given that he knew about us.

On another matter we decided to go after Colins and harass him. Doing this directly wouldn't be good for us. To do a good job we had to get close without Andrew ratting out on us.

We rented a minivan and sent Pete, Laura, Joseph, and Melissa out to shadow Colins. Andrew was with Colins most of the time now and he failed to notice the threat to his boss or master until we got a good sampling of his most recent activities. They happened to be on the Don Valley Expressway at the time and raced to take an exit. The team just continued on, letting them go. There would be little we could gain and a lot we could lose if we followed.

Some of the new facts we learned was that Colins had set up a small lab at his home to do research on Abicore. The three men captured in the raid on the camp were given Abicore and Colins learned more from the results.

Two went insane and one comatose. He was as equal to Knox in this and killed all three. He dismembered the bodies to make smaller packages and dropped them in a land fill. Colins was very shaken but he would do it again to learn more.

He had become almost as paranoid as Knox and had his house and lab wired to explode if he didn't phone in regularly. He didn't really care about his staff or the neighbours because he hated them anyway.

Colins had ideas of killing us off just so he had exclusive title to the product. Carstairs was giving him hassles because of the number of children that would have to die. At the moment they were favouring Sarin because there were few other buildings around. They could literally come in, throw all the bodies in a truck, and drive off.

This frightened all of us and Herb got angry but there was nothing he could do. Carstairs didn't like the job but would do it for an additional hundred and fifty thousand dollars per body.

Stethbridge was also giving Colins grief because he wasn't attending to his own projects. The fact that his family owned a major holding didn't protect him.

I felt sorry for his servants because they were feeling the brunt of what their boss was going through. I was happy because he had no children and no wife. No woman — no forget that, there were always women stupid enough to marry somebody who had the money Colins did.

Nicolas was called in to start our harassment. We knew from Knox and her notes how to get into the Stethbridge computer system. The codes had changed but Nicolas has this gift. Only an hour later he was in with full access. I wanted to remove all references to Abicore but it would still be on backups. The same was true of the work Colins was supposed to be doing but we could tinker with his present files and cause him grief. This work took hours. It wasn't deletions but the modifications of the files so the data was skewed just a bit.

Breaking into Colins' computer at home was many times more difficult simply because it was not always connected to the net. This work had been started long ago simply to find out what Colins knew or was attempting.

Nicolas finally got in and uploaded the files that had been altered from Stethbridge. A small bot was added later. This program simply recorded every keystroke the man made. When he went on line, a compressed file would be sent to us. This way we would get his bank accounts numbers, passwords, and a lot of other information. Hitting him in the pocketbook was a good way to hurt. Finding what he was doing was even more important.

Tuesday morning we sat in a car outside Stethbridge. Trying to be just as subtle as I was with Emily I pushed to all the arriving employees, "Gordon Colins was diagnosed as having AIDS. He got it from his new boyfriend." I didn't push hard and let their subconscious' bring up the data at a future time. We left before Colins and his shadow arrived.

Melissa found Carstairs. He lived under another name on the west side of Toronto. She did her own research and found he had no idea that he was dealing with telepaths.

This man had lots of secrets that we could use to control him but he would sooner attack and kill us just to shut us up. He had a few numbered accounts and one of those was used to pay his men. He had the account numbers of his men but not the passwords. He could make payments that way.

Now that I knew Emily we drove back to the trap. This time Kim and I flew our magic carpet through the trees just so we could get near Emily to modify her dreams. After the first few times, her subconscious was eagerly awaiting my arrival.

We also entered the minds of the men and gathered the passwords to their bank accounts. The men were lonely and Emily was not in a mood to put out. She was smart enough to know she could not stop the men once they started. The men found her unstable so kept their distance. Apparently she was talking out loud to a little girl in her brain even when I wasn't present.

I hated to do it but Emily was the only one we could use that was in the enemy camp and I worked to separate her from reality just a bit more. I rationalised this by our need and the knowledge that we could reverse this if we survived.

We kept tabs on Colins and Carstairs. The former was fit to be tied, literally. His work at Stethbridge was going down the tubes with his preoccupation on other matters. Everybody had avoided him before but now did so much more strenuously. The AIDS scare took root and he couldn't even blackmail somebody to loan him one of her holes.

A disciplinary board was set up because his work was shoddy. None of them wanted an HIV positive man in their midst either.

Colins anger did not stop him from making the two basic chemicals that would form Sarin.

When Herb found out he demanded, "I want that man dead. I'll use my own hands if I have to."

I said, "I think you're right. It's time to act. There's rain slated for tonight and winds tomorrow. They need a gentle wind going north to kill just us or any gentle wind to kill us and a few more people."



"You always have a plan. What is it?"

"First of all Nicolas has to siphon off the money from everyone that's fighting us. They'll leave if they're not going to get paid."

"That's not going to stop the attack."

"No, but it will remove most of the opposition. The rest we can intercept on their way here. The cops will still come here because they know that Carstairs' and Colins' names are linked to Knox'."

"Our rental security will vouch that we were all inside the walls but we'll sneak out the tunnel."

"Is that all the plan? Usually, you have a much more convoluted plan and one for what to do if something goes wrong."

"I have one more idea. Colins' home is sitting on a destruct device. Perhaps I can find a way of setting it off. Maybe I get Carstairs there as well."



"I like that a lot better." The rest of the pack agreed.

Nicolas got most of the money from the accounts. He left small amounts that would spell out Colins' name in ASCII. I thought it pertinent even if few would catch it. To pass the information along we needed to get Emily to do it for us. That meant a quick trip when it was still light out.

Herb, Kim, Melissa, Joy, and I were as close as we could get without tripping alarms. The rest of the people were there to boost my thoughts.

I composed myself and asked, "You guys ready?" When I got the affirmative, I called out, "Emily, can you hear me?"

I could almost sense her but she was too far away for real communications. "Carstairs and Colins are going to use nerve gas on us. We have to stop them so we can provide a home for you."

There was no answer possible so I added, "We took the money from every one of the men who are guarding you. We took all of Carstairs' money so he can't pay his men. We took all of Colins money so he can't pay Carstairs. But the gas may still be used. Tell the men so they can leave."

We stayed for ten minutes saying the same thing in different ways. For good measure I pushed a fear in their direction but I had no idea how well it would work. It might get them to investigate.

Brandon, William, and Laura were near Carstairs home feeding him some of the same vague fears.

Brandon phoned me. "It happened. Carstairs heard about Emily's prophecy and is now checking his computer." In a minute he said, "Carstairs is angry. He's yelling and screaming. His family are staying out of his way." In another minute Brandon said, "He's going to the farm to talk to the guys. He's going to try to get them to stay. He figures Colins will come through. He always has."

The team followed Carstairs from a safe distance. We also got out of the way. By the time Carstairs arrived it was raining. He drove to the house while Herb and I flew to the house to learn what was happening. The rest of them could hear through our link.

Carstairs yelled, "What is this all about Mckay? You sound like a superstitious woman."

Mckay kept his temper and said, "This woman, whether superstitious or not, said our pay was gone. It was easy to check and it is. There are only a few dollars left. The rest of the guys checked their accounts and they're the same apart from a different amount of money in each. Are you going to cover our losses? We were robbed. It all happened at the same time. You know all our account numbers. Did you let somebody else get them?"

Carstairs was flustered himself. The losses were nearly three million total and that wasn't counting his own. "What did she say, exactly?"

"She was babbling again. Then she stands up all serious like and says, 'You all have to leave. Colins is going to use nerve gas on my family.' Her eyes got big and she said, 'All your money is gone. Carstairs' money is gone. Colins' money is gone. You can find out who did it in ASCII."

"What were the sums that were left behind."

He was given the numbers and put them in order of back account number. Colin's name was spelled out. Carstairs simply said, "Damn!"

Mckay asked, "What does this mean? Are we going to get our money back?"

"I'll going to find that out now. I want four men with me."

"Yes, Sir."

The men hurried to comply but the rest of the men wanted to go. Carstairs took off in a spray of mud and a lot of anger. We stayed well back and followed.



-------

Chapter 13


Colins was ranting again. "This has to be Knox. I always knew she was a common thief. I'm going to make her pay. Nobody can do this to me."

After half an hour, Andrew came toward him and said, "Knox was robbed the same way when she went out to fight. They robbed her blind. The figure we got was sometimes 800 million to a billion dollars. She claimed it was the kids that read her mind."

Colins thought about this for a few seconds and said, "I changed the numbers on the accounts daily. You said my shield is good. You said that even you can't go through it."

Andrew said, "I can't but those kids have had the drug longer than I have. They have more experience as well."

"So they can get past my shield!"

Andrew wanted to back up and even leave the house but some situations had to be faced. "I have no idea. We can track them because they can't block us from following."

"They took my money. I want them dead. Why the hell would Knox take them back?"

"I don't know that, Sir. Knox is acting peculiar. She won't associate with the ordinary people. She was actually in Kensington Market today."

Again there was a pause. It was so hard to think when he wanted to kill with his bare hands. "Maybe they found a way to control her?"

"That's possible. She's too old to change much. From what I know of her she would fight to the end."

Rage flared again. Killing Knox with his bare hands would be so easy now. Those kids were just her experiments. They survived and turned against their master. They had to die and slowly if possible. "Were they better than you or just lucky. Nobody caught them."

"They were caught and we got one. They had help to get away. It was all a plan to lure us into a bad position and finish us off."

"There were other times."

"They went up against Carstairs' people. They never knew what to expect. Its easy to get away if you can read the opposition's mind."

"They got away from Knox' people."

"We weren't trained. We had to react to what they did but they could act anyway they wanted. How else could they shoot down a goddamned helicopter? They could shoot to kill but Carstairs and Knox' people had to capture them alive. They're smart and vicious."

"I want my money back."

"You have to capture some alive if you want that."

"We can use the gas tonight."

"It's raining, Sir. The gas wouldn't work. You'd just warn them of your intentions."

"That's it! They knew what we were preparing to do and attacked."

The double doors burst open and Carstairs group entered. A dumfounded servant didn't know what to make of their impropriety. Carstairs said, "We have to talk, now!"

The doors were closed by the last men and they took up defendable positions around the room. Colins' rage had been bottled up until now. They had burst into his home and into his room. "What's all this about Carstairs?"

Carstairs looked around the room for witnesses and said explosively, "We were robbed. All of us were robbed. That witch or whatever said that the name of the person responsible was in ACSII code. Your name was what we found, Colins."

Colins was already standing and raced forward to confront this lowborn. "I was robbed of everything as well. It was either Knox or those kids. They did it to Knox before when they left a year ago."

"Even if that's true are you going to reimburse us? It was your enemies that did this to us. I lost nearly five million. I can't take that kind of hit and neither can the men."

"I just told you, fool, that they took everything I had too."

"You have a house and stock. You're still very wealthy."

Colins had difficulty with this. He wanted to blurt out that they were on their own but if he did that he could kiss their help goodbye. "The people we're after have all our money. Let's get it back from the ones who stole it instead of fighting among ourselves?"

"When we go against them we take casualties. Your gas idea won't leave anybody left to get our money."

"Then capture one of them."

"We tried that. They seem to know exactly what we're doing."

Colins and Andrew looked guilty enough to admit that they knew. Colins said nothing so Carstairs said, "What the witch said was too accurate. Can she read minds for real?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"Don't try and stall. Answer the question. This man we captured has been near you since we met. He looks around and smiles at odd times. Tell me straight out, can he read minds? Is that how we were robbed so easily?"

The pack was coming. Herb, Kim, and I were the closest at what we hoped was the limit of Andrew's reach. I wanted to see what was in Colins' head but his block was up. I could try harder but this may alert Andrew. The need to know was too great and I tried harder.

Andrew tried to drift to one side but two men shifted to make sure he didn't get far.

"They were lucky, that's all."

"Like hell that's all. I spent the last forty minutes thinking about that woman. She's crazy but she told the truth. Knox' people were not tracking them with a transponder but with their minds. I searched their car. There was nothing odd in it.

"You acted like it was Christmas when you got the pills those people had. You got rid of the bodies of the last three people but kept the brains. We know you gave them the drug."

Colins thought furiously. There were few avenues left. "Ok, you're right. The drug is dangerous. Apparently it adversely effected an even higher proportion before. In a decade or two it may be reasonably safe to use."

I pushed harder. Andrew's block had gone up as high as it could. Some data was coming through but not enough. I needed more strength and our union wasn't enough. I reached into my pocket and immediately Herb put his hand on my shoulder. "I'll take it."

"Thanks, honey, but I was going to take it one time or another. It may as well be now."

He held me with two hands. I could feel his fear and the fear of everybody in the pack. "Don't take it. We can find another way."

"We have a chance to wrap this up once and for all. I have to do it."

Kim said, "I can take the pill."

"And the burst it gives you is minimal."

I opened the foil pouch. Both of the people I loved wanted desperately to stop me. I was pack leader though and probably now the strongest empath in the pack. I had not increased in the last few weeks. This I attributed to reaching some sort of mental plateau.

I looked at Kim and especially Herb. He was the one that was nearly falling apart from what I was doing. He was going to jump me so the pill went in my mouth quickly and I swallowed. He stopped in mid stride and just held me.



"Why did you do it? I love you so much it hurts."

"The pack is the most important. It's more significant than me or even us. I need the boost now."

"But I love you. I don't want to see you leave."

"I love you too but I was still going to try the drug."



The drug took time to work so we went back to eavesdropping on the tableau in Colins' home.

Andrew blurted out, "They're all around us."

Carstairs turned his head quickly. "Who?"

"Those people we were chasing."

"Are they attacking?"

"I can't tell. So far there are only two girls and a man. They want to listen to what we're thinking."

I decided to fabricate thoughts but not to hide them as deep hoping I could sow some disinformation.

"Where are they?"

Andrew concentrated on us and said, "A kilometre or two away. They're in a moving car."

"Are they coming this way?"

"No, they're keeping their distance."

We could feel Carstairs relax a bit. "What are they trying to accomplish?"

"The rest are coming."

"To do what?"

"I don't know. I can't get in."

"How many?"

Andrew tried to search our minds then he went around and counted those that he felt with his tracking ability. He said, "Eight young ones and an adult."

The number of young ones seemed to ease the threat in Carstairs' mind. He equated age and gender with the amount of threat.

He said, "Can you block them?"

"It's something you have to develop. It takes time."

"Can we use steel or something?"

"It doesn't work. When they are further away they can't dig as deeply into your thoughts. They're near my limits now."

"Why aren't they coming closer?"

"It's mostly kids. I figure they're waiting for help to arrive."

Carstairs called the farm. He knew the trap couldn't be sprung with telepaths around. All but one person was to come loaded to fight or drive us away. He briefly thought about Emily but he discounted her because she was crazy and of no use.

I was still pushing hard to get into Colins' mind but with no success. I said to Herb, "Drive closer. The rest are coming and everybody here are all in the house."

"How are you feeling?"

"Nothing unusual yet."

Herb turned at the next cross street and I projected my thoughts with only a little power claiming that I was so weak that I had to get closer to hear. Andrew took the bait but didn't tell anybody. I wondered what game he was playing.

Through Carstairs thoughts I heard Colins say, "I can get a loan on my shares. The opposition is mainly children. Now that you know about them you won't be fooled."

"If we were told before we could have done our job and not suffered as many casualties."

"I had to keep the secret. Governments, companies, and individuals will pay a fortune for this. They'll also happily kill to get the secret. I need help to make my position secure and I need help later to market the product."

"My people won't stay unless they get their money back."

"They can hold on for a few days. I have money in bank accounts that get taxed and they can't touch. My line of credit and the cash can handle all this."

"That's a start."

I was close enough to the house now to get some additional information. I was searching for a way to detonate his self-destruct device and dug hard. Andrew attacked and both Kim and Herb fought him off. He got in some jabs that hurt my mind and it was difficult to think straight. Kim had picked up Andrew's trick and used it on him. Bank information came easier than info about the device. I attacked Colins and his shield went even higher. I was still in but I had to fight him to gain the information. The battle lasted a minute but I got the data I needed.

Nicolas was called on the cell phone. He was still too far away to use telepathy. "Nicolas, he has the device tied in to his computer." I gave him the particulars. Then I said, "I have the codes for three bank accounts. Drain them when you have a free moment."

"Give me that info."

I transferred the information to him from Colins' brain. These accounts weren't made for net banking but Nicolas could do some wonderful things. His laptop and cellphone kept him in touch. The success of the other piece of information would be a loud noise and debris falling all over.

Carstairs thought but didn't say, "What's wrong with these freaks?" Andrew and Colins were acting peculiar because we were attacking them. It took a minute to deduce what was happening and Carstairs sent his men to monitor the approaches to the house. We didn't let up on our probing or the attacks.

We stopped a block from the house. This we hoped was safe enough but getting closer meant we learning more. Carstairs was telephoning for updates on his mens arrival. He urged them to hurry.

Kim and Herb were having trouble with Andrew. Like tag-team wrestlers on television I pounded him myself when I could spare the time from Colins.

Colins' anger and frustration were what was helping me. Instead of focussing on the attack he thought of twisting my head from my body. I taunted him to keep the anger high and he reacted the way a child would. I pushed at him that he was so poor in bed. With a smile I insinuated that Andrew had told me this because he was my accomplice all along. I mentioned his banks and the codes to access them. I said we were draining them now all because of Andrew's help.

I had little time for Carstairs but he was just looking out the windows for threats. In another jab at Colins I told him, "When we have you under our control we're going to hire Carstairs to supplement our security. He already knows about us. I was in his mind so I know that he'll agree."

He was squeezing his head trying to keep me out. I had to work hard at this but all of a sudden I was much deeper into his mind than I was before. It was like he had given up fighting me. It took a second to know that this was because of the Abicore I had taken.

I took another jab at Andrew and this knocked him to the floor. Kim and Herb looked at me but continued to hammer away. Since I was not worried about Colins' health or mental state I dug deeper than I had ever done to anybody before. He was much easier to understand at this level.

Herb came through to me and said, "We have to leave or get trapped." I only nodded my head.

While deep in Colins' mind I planted images of me standing in front of Andrew and giving him orders. My image even kissed his. I then went to something similar for Carstairs but here I was giving him a big bundle of cash.

I don't know who was more shocked, Carstairs or me. Colins had jumped up and rushed Carstairs with a letter opener off his desk. Carstairs was trained and quick. He deflected the arm holding the weapon. Colins had a good body and his rage. His fist came and connected with Carstairs' head. A left handed jab at Colins' face but didn't even faze him.

Carstairs jabbed more but kept track of the letter opener. Colins was like a wild man and even a kick to the nuts didn't get him to react. Carstairs got behind a chair then pulled out his gun. Colins had nothing in his mind but rage and the urge to kill.

Carstairs considered a simple head shot but shot the arm holding the weapon. The bullet had no effect except that the arm fell at an odd angle. Colins came on with an insane look on his face. Carstairs aimed for the head but all of a sudden there was a roar in the house. The ground shook under his feet and my connection to both Colins and Carstairs was cut off.

Kim was in shock. Finally she said, "Are they dead?"



-------

Chapter 14


We changed course. Many people would be coming out to see what happened. I had to assume that Nicolas was able to access Colins' computer and get through to the destruct instructions.

People were out in their pajamas looking down the street. A fire was burning in the rubble. There were too many people thinking worried thoughts for me to home in on the house. We could only get a block away because so many people were blocking the road.

One car was nearly filled with mercenaries. They had no idea what to do. There was a lot pressure on my mind from so people. The drug had kicked in and I was much more receptive now. Strattera helped but I tried to avoid it so I could build up some form of resistance. It was not happening now.

Herb and Kim hurt too but we stayed to find those that had been in the house. We could find none of them.

The pack arrived but couldn't get near. I said, "Brandon, Tatum, Dina, William, you guys stay here and see if any of them got away. We're going to get Emily."

It took time to get out of the area. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars converged on the burning home. I had a chance to think about had happened. The servants had probably died. They were innocent and their deaths weighted on me. Again, my justification that the pack came first helped but not as well as when the deaths were of bad people.

There was a possibility that other innocents had been killed or injured. All I could do was hide within the entity that was the pack.

The three of us drove to the farm and stopped at our usual spot. I could sense Emily much easier now. "Hi Emily. We've come to take you home." She could not send this far so I continued. "There's one man left. Tell him we're coming for you. He has the option of leaving now. Tell him that Carstairs and all the men he brought with him are dead along with his employer."

The three of us flew just over the trees and saw a car rapidly leaving just a few minutes after I repeated myself to Emily.

Emily was outside waiting for us as we flew to her and gently alighted.

"Hi Emily," I said as I hugged the woman of forty two. "This is my sister Kim and our husband Herb." I looked in her mind. Her shield was up but with a little more push I saw that she was just frightened.

"Emily, we won't hurt you. You're part of our family now."

We searched the house and found some weapons that would have been used against us but nothing much else. We took what we wanted and with Emily we drove home.

I took the woman into a bathroom and bathed her as if I were her mother. After we had a light meal I slept with her to reassure her. She cuddled with me and I began to see just what I had done to her and tried to fix it. Emily was always unstable and I had just pushed her hard and she fell. I didn't sleep as I was trying to see where she hurt and what I could do to fix it.

By morning I was tired because of lack of sleep. Emily had slept but had gotten little rest. Melissa took over for me and I got a chance to sleep.

-------

Life dramatically improved for us. Kim and I were pregnant. Emily recovered and even improved to a point far better than she had been before meeting Knox. Making people healthy had to include doing some reconstruction work to make them sane or as close as people can come and still act like human. They didn't even have to know that we could read minds.

The girls from the whorehouse came to our home to learn and as well as get adjusted. They weren't assimilated like the Borg, just shown what to do in many situations. Learning to dance and talk with others in a civilised way helped. Most of it was teaching them because they had many preconceived notions that were wrong and this screwed up everything that was built upon them.

There were some girls here that wanted to have their turn turning tricks as long as they were safe and made good money. This was just having fun. We made no money at this because the costs were high but we got some well adjusted girls out of the deal.

Cathy Keep branched out and put girls that liked women with women that liked girls. These were the girls that we couldn't help very much. They were bright enough but we couldn't inspire them to do more than seek that tingle in their clits. I wonder what humanity would be like if our brains tingled the same way when we learned something new. Boys were no different.

The school started up again but was now co-ed. Boys were adjusted and they met sane girls. Love, not just lust, reared its head and we had to ensure that there were no burdens put on them with an unwanted pregnancy.

Two important discoveries were made. The first was that Herb, Kim, Ellen, and I had no brain lesions or any other identifiable problems when we got our drug after it went through another person's body. This meant that anybody could take the drug without the adverse effects. Taking the drug in pill form later was then safe, apparently because the body know how to handle it.

The second finding was that the latest version of the drug, when filtered and processed in a persons body, changed to another type of Abicore. When a person absorbed what had been processed this way it brought about changes in their DNA. Our bodies made Abicore naturally now and we had no need to take the pills unless we needed a boost in power for some reason. We were usually content to stay at the 85% level.

Now we were waiting to see if our children would inherit this ability like Megan had. I knew we were changing the world. Books a thousand years from now would talk about us the way we talked about Alexander of Macedon. If we were wrong, they would think of us the same way they thought of Attila or Hitler.



-------

Book Three

-------

Chapter 1


I was laying on my back. No other position was comfortable to me these days and even this one was no good. Herb, our husband, had planted his seed with a lot of my help. My belly was big. I was ugly, fat and not much help to anybody.

Melissa yelled at me mentally, "You stop that or I will bite your clit."

She was resting at the moment and could do that quite easily. "I am fat and ugly."

"You're pregnant and a beautiful girl that will be fifteen soon. You have your youth, your charm and a man to help you with the baby. What else do you want? You even have lovers that make you happy."

"Wait until I pop this one. I'm going to get Herb to put one in your oven too. Then you'll see and feel what it's like."

She didn't reply and her thoughts were hidden but I knew she wanted this too. Herb was in pig heaven but then again so was I. Kim was three weeks further along than me and she was the same way except she never got over the euphoria of being pregnant. Then again the slut would suck Herb's semen through his dirty underwear.

From off in the house came, "I heard that. Who was laying on the car seat with her lips around Herb's cock for an hour?"

"He was lonely."

"Lonely my ass, we almost fucked him to death. You sucked so hard I heard air being sucked up his asshole. If there is a chief slut around here, it has to be you."

From another part of the house I heard, "You two better behave yourselves. I'll send Joy, Missy and Bobby to straighten you two out."

That was a real threat. I said, "I'll be good Mister. Really I will."

Kim said, "They suck so hard my ears pop and my skin wrinkles."

From other portions of the house we heard the three youngsters. They were taking classes and not ravishing anybody. Sometimes they did both of these activities at the same time. Oh, to be young again.

Melissa gave me a beautiful orgasm. It was not just the actions on nerve clusters but the way we used our minds to picture love, understanding, acceptance and commitment. We really did love each other.

When I was eleven and Kim two years older, our father caught us making each other happy. He beat us until I got a tennis racket and beat him. Eventually we had to run. We ended up on the streets of Toronto. A very rich lesbian took us in.

The trouble started when she ran across a drug that altered peoples' minds to let them read thoughts. She wanted all the glory and all the money so she experimented. The experiments produced one mindreader for every ten to twelve failures. The rest were dead, crazy, fucked up or the drug had no effect on them. She let the ones with nothing changed go, but soon she tried to kill those too. Witnesses she did not want.

I was and am an eager beaver. A good thing to say about a Canadian girl with connotations of legs spreading wide for everybody. I took care of those that survived. We learned a lot about the woman and when she wanted to clean us up too, we fled. We also took more than three quarters of a billion dollars with us.

We stayed free for almost a year until we found Herb. There is something about him that makes us tingle and we do not even have to see him to feel this. We provide the same effect to the poor man.

Herb got captured after saving us. We went to save him. In the process we killed the old dyke that was experimenting on us and her chief rival. He only had a little over a third of a billion dollars when he died so we took this for our troubles.

Along with reading minds, our memories and IQs increased. It looks like we gain forty to sixty percent in IQ depending on how smart you were and a lot of other facts we don't know about yet.

There are a plethora of other abilities. Hovering over the ground or even flying is now common. Healing can be done with the mind. We do this for injured bodies and for damaged minds. Kim at one time had to have a hearing aid in each ear. Now she can hear a pin drop or a couple of words whispered about her in another room.

A less prevalent skill is to form an invisible shield. We haven't stopped bullets yet but we are working in it. Some people have the ability to tell others that they are not around so a person does not see them. It does not trick cameras and some people are immune to it. We can track too. This means if we locate someone, we can find them again if they didn't get too far away.

Three people can use a variation of flying but picking up heavy objects. So far the heaviest weight was 4300 kilograms. There is no strain and the weight can even be stuck out in front with no worry about it being supported. It just has little weight but still a fair amount of inertia. This is another strange property we have not got our minds around yet.

Three other people can tell you what is on the other side of a wall. This is like they can turn the wall transparent. It works well with cards too. I won't tell you that Kim cheats because she will get mad at me.

"I heard that too, slut!"

"Some people are so nosy when I'm explaining myself."

There are a lot of skills that are unique. Nicolas is a normal everyday genius but when it comes to math, he is like what is called an idiot savant in that he is a super genius with numbers. He can get the numbers to do anything just like a crooked accountant. The numbers carry on into computing and programming. Nobody on the face of the planet Earth can come even close to what he can do. That's why we now have two billion bucks now instead of a little over one.

Joy has a specialised ability. She can pick up an object and know what its history is including who touched it. This would make any policeman drool.

Missy can focus on our thoughts and somehow know where a missing object is. Her range is steadily increasing.

Anthony can look at something far away and it will appear to be right in front of him. Something like binoculars but he can do it until he reads the text from a book at 3200 metres.

There are more capabilities but they are too weak though they do show promise. Some people showed promise too. We now have twenty four human members in the pack. Five more had been asked to join us. All had been runaways and three of these newcomers are boys. This is our way of trying to bring the ratio back to neutral.

Along with the humans, we have three female and one male Jack Russel Terriers and one large dog of indeterminate pedigree. The last was Herb's German Shepherd but he was not pureblood. Three of the terriers had the drug and survived. After we found about the way the human body modifies the drug Abicore, we extracted the drug from urine and gave it to the two dogs that had not been treated. The dogs became more intelligent and able to read minds and even send thoughts. They were not human though. They were just extremely intelligent dogs that foolishly still liked people.

My place in this menagerie was head custodian but I was also called Chief by many now. My real name is Piper but I answer to a great many more. All of them have some thoughts of love behind them. My leadership is based on knowing the will of the pack and then directing it my way since I ended up with the highest IQ. I also work harder than most but the rest of the pack will dispute that until their dying day.

Keeping the pack running well means I have to be good in everything though not necessarily the best at anything. I can fly at fifteen kilometres an hour but my bulge restricts me somewhat. My body could speed up like the 'Flash' but not as fast as what they show in the comic books. I can set up a shield that is stronger than the rest but still not good enough to stop bullets. Since I took so long to develop my abilities, I gained more from it than the rest. This makes me about the best mindreader in range but not in fine detail. My ability to tell people that I'm not here is not very good. We call this invisibility but it isn't.

We do a lot of thinking. This is not the way others do it because we relax and sort of merge into one entity. We like to call it the 'mind merge' like Spock used. When in this state. We are oblivious to everything else. Problems that would bother the pack are resolved much easier. This super being we become is both scarey and addictive. We are so much more than the sum of our parts.

We do individual research and bring it back to share with the rest. The research comes from working in our own labs but also from finding somebody that has some information we can use. With enough coverage, we can take the data we harvested and clean it up to an amazing degree. The chaff is thrown out while the intricacies between the facts are extrapolated to find new information. We know certain fields much better than the so called experts in this field.

At some time in the future, we are going to have to share this information with the rest of the world. We could publish but the articles would be received better if we actually had a diploma to back up what we claimed. This meant we had to get these worthless pieced of paper but we would be compensated by meeting new and interesting people.

The pack and the students took the GED or the Ontario High School Equivalency Certificate. This was not difficult and there were many avenues open to do this. The Scholastic Assessment Test and a college entrance examination would be necessary and better dealt with now than when time was short. A Bachelor Degree took years but there were ways of cutting this figure down.

Universities taught a lot of courses that we did not need and already knew. We could challenge and get a credit by examination. All it required was some money and to know the subject material.

The pack decided that a year in university was not bad if we got a degree. A problem that cropped up was that they would make us take subjects like world history in a basic general education program even if we could teach the subject.

The pack was certainly devious and we found a way around the conundrum. Universities had reciprocal agreements with some colleges but not all. A student taking college level courses could switch to a university without taking some courses over again. Those same colleges had the same basic general education courses that the university would make us take. We could test out in them first then go to a university that recognised that particular college's courses. Part of the hassle was that we could only do so many per semester. This only meant that we had to go back until we tested out in all of them. To do this faster, all we had to do was register in other colleges that had the same reciprocal agreement with that particular university.

The idea of going to colleges and universities was to look for potential pack members. We could do the same in high school but then parents would not allow their little Johnny or Sally to stay with us and pick up our ethics. It was much easier picking up suitable runaways. We could find people in a university or a college and induct them if they lived away from home.

It would be better if only a few of us went to any particular university at one time. We would be highly visible as it was and if we made it in one group then we would gather too much notice. We looked through what individual colleges had to offer and the pack broke up along sub family lines or just friendship so they could go to one particular university.

I wanted to go to the University of Ottawa because of their medical training and to be near the politicians. When our presence became known, we had to have laws already in place to protect us.

-------

I walked towards the games room. We were always in each other's minds like a pack of voyeurs. Eight-year-old Bobby was pounding into Dina's vagina. He was of average size with a chocolate brown skin. He was our youngest and everybody treated him special as they did the next two youngest, Joy and Missy.

Dina grabbed the boy's face and said, "If you are going to make love, you better do it to me and not the television. Nobody likes to be taken for granted."

"I'm sorry, Dina. I love you dearly and I should be paying more attention to your needs but I just saw on the television that a young girl has become lost and may be abducted."

Dina pulled Bobby's face close and kissed him with a lot of love. She sent her feelings to him and even some images of what he was like when seen through Dina's eyes.

"That's ok Bobby. I worry about people too."

When I came into the room, their lovemaking forgotten. They were looking for excitement, some fun and perhaps a chance to do something good.

Bobby and Dina held each other and both tried to speak at the same time. Basically they wanted to go and hunt. That meant they would want Missy to help them. Missy was studying history instead of tasting anatomy. Her mind was excited too so I knew she wanted to go. A quick poll of the rest signified that they wanted the same.

I was not quite bored but it would be fun to go out even if I had to waddle. Ideas started to flood into my mind from the pack. We had the name of the borough she lived in and one photograph that went on television.

When security heard what we intended, they wanted to come too even if it was their job. The school was aroused. A portion of those that stayed with us were slated to get the drug that would make them geniuses and mind readers. Until we were sure, this group was on probation. We had tinkered with their minds just enough to straighten them out. Then we put a form of compulsion that twisted their minds a bit so they would not talk about us. Some of the children had actually wanted to go back to their families because they saw that they were the parents were the ones that were screwed up. Psychiatry was easy for us as we could read their minds.

There were more people going than there was pack. It was June and it would be a beautiful night to go out. The rain and wind with heavy gusts made it less fun. Everybody except Kim and I had packs. We got special treatment because we filled out our rain gear so well. We had two flashlights and even extra batteries. A first aid kit, cell phone, GPS, a large towel and a package of tissues.

There was hardly anybody left when the gates closed behind us. Missy was in the lead limo with Bobby and Joy. For once they were together like this and not horny.

Bobby shot back, "I'm always horny. The drug did this to me. We are just focussed on what we have to do."

Joy added, "We don't screw all the time."

Missy added, "Only most of it." All of them chuckled then.

Traffic was lighter than usual but there were a lot of vehicles still moving. I visualised the city map in my mind and zoomed in mentally. Missy would stop at the home of the lost child to find out the information and I gave instructions to other pack members as to where they had to go.

Kim, and Herb were together and would search an area to the north east. I had the north with three students. They were my age or a bit older except for Joan who was nineteen and driving.

We all had to wait on the lead car. We found our positions and stopped. It was anticlimactic for the students to just wait. The pack could focus through Missy's mind as if we were there instead.

The family lived in a midrange high-rise. Missy and Joy went alone and were lucky enough to get in when somebody else was going into the building. They read the woman's mind about the family that lost the child. The woman did not know exactly where they lived.

The two girls got to one side and scanned what they could of the building with Bobby and the rest of us. On the eleventh floor we hit pay-dirt and the girls went up the elevator.

The hallway only had one old woman walking to do some laundry. Joy touched the doorknob and concentrated. Thousands of people had touched this piece of metal and it took time to find Jennifer's, the lost girl.

Joy sent us a clearer mental picture of the child. The news said she was six but she was taller than we expected. She was also chubby. The picture in the newspaper did not convey this information.

I was not paranoid but being suspicious was still a survival trait I acquired when on the run. Missy and Joy were our point guards as we searched the apartments for any sign of the girl or any person that may have taken her. We finished the building and there was nobody that was above our normal perv index.

Missy knocked on the door and it was quickly opened. A black woman looked down quickly. Missy quickly said before the woman could get angry, "Hello. My sister and I can find lost articles. Could we hold something of Jennifer's for a minute?"

"Who are you?"

Missy smiled and said, "People looking for Jennifer. All we want is to touch something that was intimately hers, like a teddy bear or even her PJs."

"Go home! Can't you see that we have problems?"

Missy was only eleven and put on her act. This time she acted angry. "Yes I can! You're so worried that you can't see help when it comes knocking. Go get her PJs and let me touch them. That's if you really want Jennifer home again."

The woman wanted to slap Missy but a girl of twelve brought the PJs and had to dodge her mother.

Joy took the garment and said sweetly, "Thanks Courtney."

The mother was going to grab the garment back but Missy blocked her. It took a moment but Joy said, "She is further away than three thousand metres, but I feel she is south east of us."

Missy moved and handed the cloth back. She said, "Thanks. I don't think she was taken. She could be just hiding from the rain and wind."

The mother took the PJs back with care and said, "Thanks—little girl. I should not have been angry. I'm not usually that way."

"Yes you are. You think you are holding it in but you're not. Your children see your anger and react to it. The death of your sister hurt you too much. You need to seek some help then you will go back to what you were like a few years ago. Your family loves you. They are acting defensively though. Courtney is too quiet and Jennifer eats too much."

The woman had her mouth open. Joy had sent back what the woman already knew and tried to do it so the woman would wake up and recognise the facts.

Missy said, "We'll start our search now. I'll phone as soon as we know something."

All the woman could say was, "Thanks."

I shifted the perimeter outward to at least three kilometres after the girls sent the images. We got out of the cars in many areas but most of the time we could stay in where it was dry.

The excitement for the students tapered off and we sent them images of what we saw. We stayed away from couples having fun for obvious reasons. There was enough negative emotions around to sample that would not detract from the search.

Jennifer, as her mother and sister saw her, was in our minds. We used this complicated image to search out the mind behind it. There was a lot of people here but none of us took the drug strattera to block out a portion of the noise. We were trying to build up a mental filter that reduced our confusion but allowed us to use our abilities.

Joy directed her car out six kilometres and made a large circle then had to do it at four kilometres simply because of the problems she was having with so many people being near.

We all got a tingle once in a while until the leads proved false. I was the one that got a strong reading and we changed direction. The buildings were commercial and old. Some were rundown. One had been boarded up after suffering a fire.

There were fewer people here to confuse me but there were some. A sampling showed that they were homeless. The mental fog seemed to dissipate until I homed in on the girl. She was lonely and miserable.

I called the pack's attention to the girl. Since Joy and Missy had talked to the mother, they would be the logical ones to take her back. The girl had her problems but they were not really that much more severe than any other child.

She was feeling sorry for herself. When I dug deeper I saw that she had a fight with her mother about her weight. The mother wanted her child to succeed but Jennifer needed attention from her mother or food as a substitute.

The father worked too much and so did the mother. Courtney took care of her sister but had her own friends. Lugging around a sister half her age was awkward and embarrassing.

I had amassed quite a bit of info by the time the limo arrived. Joy ran first but the other two were right behind. Gaining access to the building was hard unless you knew what to move to get in.

Jennifer heard people moving around. There were others in the building with her but they didn't know she was present.

Fear was strong so Bobby spoke verbally to Joy, "Jennifer's in here but why isn't she at home?"

Joy said, "She's angry at her sister and her mother. Even her father is too busy to help her."

Their young voices were less threatening and the three teenage boys decided to just prepare for an attack but to otherwise say nothing.

Missy now lead the way down a hall and past the room with the boys. The place stank and there was litter everywhere.

The triumvirate continued to talk so their location was known. The back room was a mess with cardboard boxes and the stench of mouldy paper and cloth.

The lights they carried were not directed onto the girl. She was hiding behind a barricade of paper. The three talked among themselves and Bobby was the one that went forward. He crouched down and said, "Hi Jennifer. My name's Bobby. My friends Missy and Joy are here too."

Jennifer was hiding and figured her position was known and there was no need to hide. She looked out and saw Bobby. She was doing a lot of thinking but said nothing.

Bobby said, "I have a bottle of water. Do you want some?"

She was thirsty but said nothing. Finally Bobby extended his hand and the girl took the container. When she couldn't open the bottle, Bobby said, "Let me open it for you."

The girl handed the bottle back and Bobby was quick. The girl took a long drink but still said nothing. The flashlight beam was directed at the ceiling and illuminated the entire room. Bobby stood now and said, "We've been looking for you for an hour. How did you get here?"

He knew how but wanted some verbal response. Bobby tried a different path and said, "Courtney's sorry she yelled at you."

"No she's not. She's always mean."

"She's twelve and still a child. She wants to have fun and so do you. Your parents work and Courtney has to look out for you."

"She can have fun. I'm not stopping her."

"If she leaves then she gets into trouble. You get into trouble too because somebody isn't around to keep you out of mischief."

"I don't get into trouble." This was said in a haute voice or at least as much as a child of six could project.

"Let's see. Yesterday you got into your sister's makeup. You got into your mother's the day before. Did you play nice? No! You made a mess and left it. You're too young to reason very well. That's why you need somebody to watch you."

"I'm big."

"Are you hungry?"

"Ya."

"So where is the food you should have taken with you?"

"I forgot."

"Where is your pack with a change of clothes?"

"I forgot."

"So you brought chocolate bars and candy then bought more of them with the money you had."

"So?"

"You acted like a girl of six not a big girl. A big girl thinks first." He turned to the other two and said, "Will you come here please? Jennifer has to learn what it's like to be a big girl."

It was a little rough at first then the girls told Jennifer what responsibility was. They knew that fighting the lazy streak was the hardest.

Missy said after a while, "Your mother was crying."

Jennifer was glad. This was getting her attention. Joy said, "You should be ashamed of yourself. Your mother cries and you smile." She projected images of what could have happened to the girl. She stayed away from the worst ones. It took a few minutes before Jennifer began crying but the images continued.

Joy said, "Do you want to live here or with your family?"

"I want my mommy."

Joy hugged the girl and the girl hugged back as if she had a life ring thrown to a drowning girl.

The three boys in the other room had said nothing and neither did our group. In a moment our group emerged from the building, Missy used her ability to form a shield. The rain that would have hit them was directed away as if they had a large umbrella.

On the way back to the girl's home the three tried to show Jennifer what it was like to act responsibly and still have fun.

At the door to the apartment building, Jennifer used her key. All four went upstairs. A different key was used to open the apartment door. The father this time jumped up. He was so relieved then he was going to yell at his daughter.

Missy said, "Stop!" The father actually did but the mother and sister were running to get to the door. "Your daughter ran because she did not get enough attention from her father and her mother. You work too much and then come home and watch the television. You think a foolish sitcom is more important than your daughters' lives.

"If it was up to me I'd have a course in parenting in the schools and if you didn't pass you never get a permit to have kids. You thought it would be so neat to start a family and didn't really consider all the work it was or how long it would take.

"You're the one that should be ashamed. Instead you want to hide your shame in anger and direct it at a six year-old child.

The man was big and said, "You can't talk like that. What do you know about parenting?"

"I know a helluva lot more than you think. Use your intellect not your emotions. Jennifer eats because she's lonely. She gets ridiculed because she is overweight and she eats more. You have more lard on you than you should. Show her by example. The world has enough hypocrites."

The mother had stopped to listen but then raced to her daughter and hugged her. "Where did you find her?"

Missy said, "First of all, there were fifty of us out hunting for Jennifer not just the three you see here. She was eight kilometres away by car. She was in a derelict building. Three boys were in there and didn't know she was there. They would not have hurt Jennifer but others could. We explained to Jennifer some of the things that could happen but avoided the worst ones. She needs a bath and some sleep. After that she needs some understanding. You and your sister had issues. When she died you felt it was your fault. Now you have issues with your daughters. What are you going to be like if Jennifer had not come back?"

"How do you know about us?"

"I'm smart and I watch the world about me. I then try to understand. I didn't get this way by sitting in front of a television. Some information I got from Jennifer."

The mother didn't know what to say but she finally came out with, "Thank you, thank you so much. I don't really know what to say. Can I do something for you?"

"Yes you can." The woman was startled because this was not one of the standard responses that she had learned.

"What is it?"

"You will go to the beach once each weekend until it gets too cold. You will go for walks or hikes to break the monotony. And most of all, you will take that hunk of beefcake along with you to carry the tent. He has some useful abilities besides drawing water and chopping wood. All of you need to get back in shape."

"I'll do it."

Joy, Bobby and Missy looked at the father until he understood that he had to respond. "I'll do it if that's what you want."

"We do and it has to continue until the very end of September. If you miss a weekend then you have to make it up somehow."

"I will do it."

"Then we'll go then. It's been nice meeting all of you."

"The father said, "Wait! It's late and it raining. Let me drive you home."

"That's alright. We have a car waiting downstairs for us."

"You should have had your parents come up with you."

Bobby said with some anger. "Our parents were hooked on drugs. They sold each of us to their dealers. We have a strong family now and we look after each other and try to help the community."

"They sold you? Don't you mean something else?"

"I'm young; not stupid. I write novels and short stories. My grasp of the English language is actually quite good if I choose to use it correctly. We were individually sold to finance one of our parent's drug habits. Luckily we did not fall into the sex trade."

"How do you live?"

"If I wanted to, I could purchase this building. Does this answer your question?"

"No, I don't understand."

"Your understanding is not important. Your word to us will mean a stronger family unit."

Missy read deeper into the man and said, "At one time the measure of a man was his word. I believe you will renege because your word was given to children. We don't renege. Think of us as people you owe a debt to. Failing to pay makes you less of a man and less of a father."

The three turned on Joy's unspoken command and marched out. They left a thoroughly confused man and his family.

The next day, Nicholas reported that Jennifer's father worked for a company we had some shares in. Herb phoned the president and made sure the father would have weekends off.

Herb commented to us, "That was a good idea. The president may look harder at the father and perhaps the man can work his way up the corporate ladder if it doesn't conflict with is family duties."



-------

Chapter 2


It was fun to help people. At school we discussed people in general and some in particular. Basically we were turning out psychologists. It was easy to teach this because we could study a municipal or a provincial politician in great detail. We could see how he voted and what he said to get elected. Then we could go to a meeting or a sitting of the provincial legislature to find out what they were really like as a group.

The students were all disillusioned at what they found. We pushed what we saw into their minds. Not all politicians were bad just that all of them had agendas of their own. Those that backed them were listened to when it came to voting. Laws were passed that benefited certain groups but next week another group benefited. This wasn't something against the democratic process but against all humans.

The students then learned how we were going to get laws passed that would benefit us and do it long before we stopped hiding. Some of us would have to stoop to become politicians.

The criminal mind was not much different than the political but they were easier to prosecute. We had used our powers and abilities to do a lot of good. We started to fly at night to scoured the city looking for criminal activity. There was always something happening. Finding more than very small crime was more difficult.

The pack decided to start small so we could learn. Anthony was the youngest boy besides Bobby. We encouraged him to learn how to fly and he did fairly well. He went up with Ellen. She was our resident grandmother and the women the four older boys liked to screw the most. She was 63 but our healing made her look twenty years younger. She exercised hard because the boys wanted her to.

They were down by Finch and McCowan when they saw some people with spray cans painting a train. This was not a heinous crime but it was damaging property and causing unneeded expense. Ellen and Anthony came down but after looking into the young men's minds. They found that the only thing a confrontation would bring would be to get into a fight with somebody getting hurt. They ended up doing nothing but calling the railway police.

The next morning, Brandon said, "If you had flown in like Superman then they would have shit their drawers and run."

Herb said, "You're right but one day somebody will see your face and then you would be the one to run."

Kim said, "Make a mask like the Lone Ranger. You can put a mask on the horse too so he is not recognised."

Bobby jumped on this. "Make a cape like Batman with the cowl. A flashy suit will get them to look at the material more."

Joy blurted out with a lot of enthusiasm, "I can dress as a fairy princess with a wand. They won't mess with me if I can fly."

I just waddled into the room and said, "Brandon should have a suit. He flies down and picks up a car or something. He better wear gloves to hide his fingerprints." Everybody liked the idea except Brandon.

Ellen said, "If you do this you better start at the other end of the city. The first tests are usually made near home. Once somebody starts to believe the people that see us then they will check all over."

Missy eagerly said, "You need the utility belt."

Bobby said, "Ya! I'll put condoms in mine. Maybe some lube."



Missy blurted, "You're such a pig. I don't know what I'm going to do with you when you get older."

"The same thing you do with me now. This tongue of mine makes you happy."

"I thought you would slow down after we got off the drug but you're the same."

"I love my family, Missy. I'd do anything for you and die if necessary."



This was the truth and Missy walked to the boy and hugged and kissed him. When she pulled back, she said, "I'm going to make your costume."

"Can I be Batman or Robin?"

"I'm going to dress you in tights and put falsies on your chest. Nobody will recognise you because you will look like Batgirl."

He excitedly said, "Can I let my dick hang out when I get hot. That will confuse everybody."

Missy patronizingly said, "We'll stick a salami down your pants and the women will chase you."

Bobby tried to act even more juvenile. "Now you're talking."

There was no use trying to stop this but I could deflect it a bit to be safe. "There are going to be rules. You all wear high boots that come almost to the knee. They have to be flashy and safe to walk on. Everyone has to have a mask that will not come off during a fight. A cellphone with a bluetooth ear bud goes everywhere with you. Your clothes have to be flashy just like the boots so people will not remember what you look like even with a mask. Think of names now so you can answer to them. Lastly you have to train like never before and in groups. Each of you lack essential skills. Learn to use the group to get what you want."

Herb had a dissenting voice and said, "This is dangerous and it will draw all sorts of unwanted attention."

"You're absolutely right. If you look through their minds you will find that they all want to do this. Most of us are still kids. That's the problem. We're all smart but inside we are still immature. You want to do this too but you still know its dangerous."

"You're probably right, honey. I voiced my opinion and now I'm going to work with the pack to make your costume."

"Mine? I'm too fat and slow. Am I going to be Cow-woman? I'm not going into any costume."

His mind closed off and he pushed, "You are absolutely right, honey. If I were you, I'd go naked too. You would be Earth Goddess. There's this artist named Boris Vallejo. He makes drawings of beautiful people but mainly women. I want to see you with a tiger on a leash and a sword in your other hand."



"You'll see no such thing. I'm the mother of one of your children."

"Who better to represent the pack. A raven haired Valkyrie that comes to Earth to dispense justice."

"You're full of shit."

"I know that love. But I know that you like the idea too. You can wrap Stanley Eliot Stewart up like an Indian papoose and go out to guide our band of merry men and women."

"Now you want to be Robin Hood."

"We can use a bow pretty good. You can be Diana. We can put you in a see through robe."

"I'll hardly make a virgin huntress in my condition but I might make a fair stab at being a fertility deity."

"And a most beautiful one at that."



My mind was split over this. We had no threats to speak of now. Flying through the air would cause a world of trouble for us. If we were extremely careful we wouldn't have the government of the world chasing us. Once they knew we existed then we would be chased until we died.

We made uniforms anyway and then revised them. I bought property in far away places and got it prepared to receive us if we had to run. We would have to be very talented to not get chased because we could never win that race.

Two weeks before Kim was due we heard a faint voice. I thought it was an animal until it flashed into my mind that it was Jessica. Kim's unborn child. This caused an uproar in the house for a few days until Stanley came to our attention.

I felt stretched and full but I felt more of a mother now even though I had not delivered yet.

Everybody came around to put their hands on my belly then Kim's to say hello to the newest pack members. Kim and I even laid belly to belly so the two sibs could get to know each other.

While we were sidelined, the girls in the pack made sure Herb didn't suffer but I was happy to see that he thought of us all the time he was pushing into one of those nice girls.

Melissa was in one of her subservient moods. She put on my collar. I hooked a leash to it just before Kim was due. I led her naked to the local stud service. Herb was typing notes into the computer and I put the leash in his hand.

Our minds were closed and I said verbally, "I want to breed this slut. She has many fine qualities I would like to see perpetuated."

"Are you two serious? I thought this was mostly a joke."

"No joke. She's fertile in the next two days."

"I just can't do that."

"You have been screwing Dina and the older ones and making Joy and Missy happy with your tongue. What's the difference?"

"I am not going to be an absentee father. The child stays with us and calls me Dad. The mother has to stay too. I'm only doing my share of the diapers not all of them."

We dropped our blocks and Herb saw just how we thought. He also saw how Melissa had to be subservient sometimes and this was one of those times. Kim and I stayed to make sure Melissa was aroused and that Herb was doing all he could. Kim watched the semen spurt in and then monitored the progress. The egg had not separated yet so this was just a practice run. Herb was not that romantic now and just groaned.

A few days later, it looked like we had another child forming. Everybody wanted to look through Kim's mind to see what was happening. Anybody that could do this was in demand too. Melissa was the one that wanted to see everything and this actually caused her to begin to see for herself.

Kim had a short delivery and I think it was the pack and our control of the health facility that made it almost painless. Jessica was a beautiful baby and Kim had to fight to get her.

When my turn came, Stanley popped out just as easy. There was no tear and no stitches because our muscles fully dilated. Stanley was as beautiful as his father. When he looked into my eyes, I knew he could not see right but we did communicate. I was the happiest I had ever been.

The babies were beautiful in other ways. They hardly ever cried. There was always somebody around to pick them up.

On the matter of the costumes, it was getting cold so we shelved the idea for a while. We had to make boots and some had to be made of silver or chrome. Joy got hers covered with gold leaf.

The costumes chafed and my nipples hurt since I was still feeding Stan. He was a voracious eater just like his sister. Megan was there all the time to see 'her babies' and we encouraged this. The students too had to learn first hand about babies just like I told Jennifer's father. The small sampling of stinky diapers would not be enough for some foolish girls but I hoped all of my girls were not going to be that bad.

I had my birthday just before Stan was born but I was still too young to get a driver's licence. But next year, watch out. I signed up for a fixed wing licence that would lead to another licence for a rotary-wing aircraft. Planes I found were noisy and cold but I was determined to learn.

We took flying lessons at the school too. We carried the students around as a series of tests. Somebody may have to go to the hospital. We learned what not to do but nobody got hurt.

By now everybody had their GED and many that were slated to go to the University of Toronto, started to go to affiliated colleges to write tests so they would not have to take the courses in university.

Our subfamily liked medicine. I encouraged Herb to become a doctor. Kim would need the same thing and then continue on to become a psychiatrist. I wanted to make drugs to help the world. Melissa would do what we wanted her to do but she preferred paediatrics. She could study with Kim and specialise later.

We all peed in a bottle instead of a toilet. It was inconvenient but as yet the only way we knew to extract the type of Abicore that our bodies produced.

One boy named Eric was so good we had to elevate him with the five others. This made four boys and two girls. He, like the rest, would only get small amounts until he grew into his new powers. As predicted, the pack seemed to segregate to those that thought similarly. I thought of them as family units that lived within a village environment. There was still sex outside of the family and some even outside the pack. The students loved what the pack could do to them and they were all sorrowful to leave the school to go back to their other jobs.

The homes in Owen Sound and London now became vacation cottages and we sent the students there for a break. Other homes in British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Quebec were being worked on. They would be where we would go if we were found out. Other locations needed more research. We would eventually have homes in every large city in Canada. In most cases, we needed to look for good choices and this meant contacting people to act as our agents.

These locations were kept secret from all except the pack members. In any case it would be into the new year before they were ready. We needed major work done and each one had to be done before we moved in.

Five apartments were set up Toronto just so we would have a safe place to go if we could not make it home. Two of them were at property we already owned.

Even with this structure in place I tried to moderate what the pack did. It was much better to go someplace incognito and do something good than it was to wear the uniforms.

To regulate this we posted people at the Hospital for Sick Children. Children were treated there but not all of them were cured. This was true of any hospital. The ones that had major problems but not needing full time hospitalisation went home.

The pack broke up into small groups and trained on how to conceal themselves in the invisibility protocol. Two or more people linked together could be hidden if one person was good with this procedure.

We would sneak into homes while in full costume. This required somebody that could see through matter and pick locks. Floating or flying prevented noise from loose boards. The sick children would be treated to the best of our abilities and then we would leave. Healing sometimes took months to complete and more than one treatment.

Baby monitors had to be bypassed because we could not hide from a camera. One mother even came into the room when we were there but could not see us though her nose detected our scent. Homes with burglar alarms gave us another problem. We had not found a way to deactivate them if we did not get the code from a parent's mind.

I was not part of these teams because I was training the teams so they would not be caught. This encouraged them to learn more skills and hone the ones they did have.

My sister and husband mounted a campaign like any successful and crooked politician and got the pack to get me to wear my costume. The boots came up just past my knees and were covered in metal scales with pockets for my equipment. A thin belt of gold plated chain held a sheath and a knife. My face was half covered with something like spandex. But had some stiffeners in to keep it in place. It went around my head and then around my neck. Some of my hair went inside the mask and some stayed outside.

No self respecting whore would wear the costume but I had to hide this very deep from the pack. I had put on a growth spurt and I was normal in size now. My breasts had put on even more of a growth spurt to feed Stan. I wore a costume bra that looked like a boy was behind me supporting my breasts. My nipples stuck out under a thumb on each side.

Herb modelled them after his hands but much smaller because he claimed it hid too much of my beauty. The pervert just wanted to gawk at me. The lower portion of a thong bathing suit gave me as much protection as the bra.

If I squatted the bottoms pulled into my crack and I showed a lot more. If I exercised the same thing happened. All the damn thing did was rub on my clit. The pack and my family liked it though so I had to wear it.

All of us were in excellent shape even before this costume craze hit the pack. Now we had to look our bests. This was not lost time because our minds could work on our studies as we pumped iron or ran.

Herb looked very good if not yummy. He had a similar mask but his shorts were what a braggart would wear on the beach. At least Herb had something to brag about. His boots were like what a professional wrestler would wear. They held his equipment, well the equipment not in his shorts.

Kim wore pasties on her nipples with tassels. She had a more conservative outfit where you could not see her lower lips if she moved around. She even had a strip five centimetres wide in the back. This rode in her ass cheeks and was only two centimetres then. It was still a lot wider than mine.

Her boots were the same as mine but differed in colour. We both had five centimetre heels that threw us off balance but made us stand proud and show our breasts. These at least were an alternate weapon as we could kick and use the heel to really hurt.

The fourth member was Baron. He was not the shaggy dog of before. He was groomed by all of us. Joy made him a mask similar to ours and Baron was happy to wear it. Like Herb, he was in pig heaven. Like a ham he admired his mask in the mirror.

The terriers could fly if they wanted but it was difficult to get them off the ground. They did not have the mind humans had to fight the instinct of falling. Baron was not quite as bad and would fly with us in the gym. It helped if we had practice dummies to attack. He was more focussed on the attack than the method of approaching the enemy.

Kim and I looked good too if we could go by the difficulty Herb had in keeping his erection down. Kim and I had stretch marks on our abdomen but after we had the babies we worked hard to heal our bodies. It took a month and you would not know we had kids apart from our full breasts. Herb took any excess from our breasts so it would not go to waste. He was a growing boy and need this he claimed.

William, Ellen and Anthony worked on healing their own bodies too but it was to artificially put on muscle. The ligaments had to be strengthened and I was worried about bones snapping under load. They tried to copy my ability to move fast and this got them into reflexes. This helped with overall speed but also improved our fighting ability.

When we worked as a unit, I supplied the shield for all of us. I could shape the shield so we could fly faster too. Herb and Kim had to row as well. We could get up to eighty kilometres an hour when we pushed very hard. I had no idea how we pushed or what we pushed against because it sure wasn't air.

Kim saw through solid objects which wasn't that much of a crime fighting weapon. She was better than me for pushing us though the air.

Herb was not tall but he was wide. He was an imposing figure and lots of times I had to pull the material away from my clit. The damned material was always wet too.

Like the other teams, we fought as a unit. The only worthy adversaries were other members of the pack. The students cheered us on or fought us. They were not good yet but they tried hard and didn't pull punches. I racketed up the fighting by telling them that if they conquered Herb, they could ravish him. The pig didn't fight as hard then.

We fought crime in regular clothes. It was too cold to do anything else. We placed through Toronto many receivers capable of processing encrypted police communications as well as those sent in the clear. Land lines sent this information to the school where a very expensive computer processed the voices looking for specific words. This way a few people could study and when an alarm came, listen to the message. This happened about fifty times a day.

We could respond to some but the police and firemen did too good of a job for us to upstage them.

Megan was encouraged to fly. She was sixteen months old and had been walking for three quarters of her life. She was unconsciously using her abilities to keep herself stable. Like teaching infants to swim, Megan was not happy to be thrown like a toy. She did fly though but it took a lot out of her like it did the rest of us. So far she had not shown any other talent apart from communicating mentally.



-------

Chapter 3


Herb said, "My cousin Jeff is having a birthday soon. I want to get rid of the house and make peace with the fire department and Dr Vale. Ellen should make an appearance and straighten out her affairs too."

"Are your homely brides invited to go with you?"

Herb blew up. I had not seen this coming. "Don't say that ever. You and Kim are beautiful. Even a person that doesn't have the emotional involvement I have will find you at least pretty."

"I'm sorry hon. Maybe I'm fishing for compliments?"

"You don't need to do that. I feel that we are forming more attachments to each other all the time. Its like being wrapped in spider silk. You're just as much a part of me as my arm."

We had to hug then and this felt just like the spider silk and I could take all of this I could get.

Finally Herb said, "Our family can all go. Ellen will be who you will be with and I will try to stay away."

"What about Melissa? That bun is yours. She can play the part of your girlfriend and keep those two beauties in your shorts from bursting."

Herb said, "As long as I get my wives too. What about Ellen? She's having more sex than a dozen women a third her age."



"You have my permission to take care of her too."

"Well, she's less my grandmother now but I feel funny about it."

"She can find some men in Orillia to keep her occupied."

"She'll kill them."

"Have faith, they won't mind going to their deaths at all."



A week later we got into a new full sized van that had been extensively converted into a mini motorhome. We needed the room. There were five adults and two babies. We pulled a small rental trailer to bring a few things back.

The school stopped for an hour to see us off. I felt humbled by what I felt. The pack and the students could get along well without me, but I sort of made everything run smoother.

We had not even got out of the city when Herb was taken to the back to break in the motorhome right. I had to get some too before he ran out. We could feel poor Ellen in the front with a tingling clit and nothing she could do. When Herb ran out we gave him a break and told him to drive while we took care of Ellen. She was supercharged by this time and it was us that were pounced on.

The time passed quickly though we did have to take breaks to feed the babies. Ellen and Melissa were seriously studying us because they were thinking of trying to be wet nurses to give us a break. It was probably Herb that was putting this idea into their heads because there was never enough to feed him. Herb denied it but not very strenuously.

Ellen took possession of her home and I could feel her thoughts on how the house now seemed to belong to a person she met once instead of her own. Everything looked dated as if an old woman lived here.

"I see I'm going to have to do some redecorating." She looked at Herb and asked, "You still going to get rid of your place?"

"Yes, there is no reason to keep it."

We got the house heated up a little more and then started to clean up the dust. We had only been working an hour when Mrs Hays came over to say hello.

She said, "Ellen, what have you done? You look twenty, no twenty five years younger. I almost didn't think it was you. Why didn't you call?"

"Wow there Shelly. If you're referring to my body then I'll say that I spent time effort and money to get the way I am. Medical science can do a lot if you find the right people and are prepared to pay for their services."

Ellen continued, "I got wrapped up in a new job. I'm a school nurse though those positions are rare now. I got so involved in my new job that I had to cut ties to my past. You would absolutely not believe what I have gone through. I've changed inside too even more dramatically than my exterior."

"What happened?"

"Well come in and I'll introduce you to three of the young ladies that go to the school and two of their darling babies. My grandson Herb is somewhere. He works at the Albright School for Gifted Children the same as I do."

Ellen put some water on for tea and then found us working upstairs. Herb was hiding in the basement until he got his cue to come on stage.

We were dusting the furniture or sweeping when the two women approached. Introductions were made but the three of us acted like adults. This shook Shelly Hays somewhat but it was better at the start than later.

Stan and Jessica were both asleep like babies their age and like all women we made a fuss over them without trying hard to wake them up but still display how beautiful they were.

We went downstairs for tea. Shelly said to Kim and I, "You two sound so mature for your age and very sure of yourselves."

I said, "Thank you Mrs Hays. The school teaches us the way to act in many situations. Since Albright is a private school, our curriculum is much more encompassing than other schools."

Mrs Hays had to be told more but Ellen had to carry the ball now. "The School has a very limited enrollment. You would not believe the entrance requirements. The student have to be reasonably stable but also have an IQ of a 150. Many of the students surpass this mark handily."

"A minimum requirement of 150 sounds like the school would have difficulty gaining enough students and that means that only the very wealthy could go there."

"Actually every student is on a scholarship. The school has some serious money behind it. Covering a years worth of provincial requirements is quite easy for the students. The rest of the time is spent learning more of the world because each of the students will leave an indelible mark on it one day. Some will go to politics but most will go to research, medicine and business."

Mrs Hays desperately wanted to know about the babies but this had to be mentioned much later and in private.

Herb came up from the basement and called out, "We have a leaky valve, Grandma. I have to go to the store."

"Come here Herb. We have a visitor."

Herb came into the kitchen with a spider web on his hair and looked at our guest. "Hello Mrs Hays. Forgive my appearance but I was put to work."

"Hello Herb. I wondered what happened to you. All of a sudden you just disappeared."

Herb now looked very sad. It was Ellen that said quickly, "He was called away on a personal matter. Herb teaches some courses at Albright relating to the medical profession. It's a worthwhile course for the students to take."

Herb had a tea with us and left. He had his own visiting to do and we were ostensively under Ellen's care. Kim and I left to check on the children and Melissa came with us. This allowed Ellen to say that we were smart girls but we got carried away with our emotions just as much the rest and found ourselves pregnant.

Ellen mentioned about how Herb ran off to Toronto to find Nicki dying. He stayed with her for her last few weeks. Everybody knew that he still carried the torch for her even though they had divorced. Ellen had found a place for him at the school to take care of him. Herb was still upset about Nicki's death and this did not have to be faked.

All this news would get around the community in just a few days. If they saw Herb without a shirt, they would find out that he spent his free time studying for medical school and exercising. This was much the same as what he had been doing before he ran off to save us.

There had to be some other form of psychic communications because many more people suddenly showed up at the house. We stayed long enough to be introduced then we left for the rumour to be passed around to a few more people.

We purchased enough food for a short stay and we basically helped Ellen entertain. She liked how her friends were so shocked at her present appearance.

Herb collected all he wanted from his house then called his relatives in to take the rest. The relatives ended up at Ellen's where we were introduced again. This is the part we liked because we got a chance to see our new relatives. Herb desperately wanted to hold us and the babies too but he had to appear to be just an instructor and friend.

I was shocked when Greg Thompson and his wife Rose showed up. I could sense them coming up the snow-covered walk. The five of us went over what Greg knew about us and how our story had to be altered.

While Herb was being greeted, I blindsided Greg and when a break in the conversation came I said, "Hello Mr Thompson. Do you remember me?"

He turned quickly because he did remember my voice. He looked at me and smiled. "Hello Danielle, I mean Dannie. I did not expect to meet you here."

"I'm sorry but I deceived you. Marty was actually Jess. She was running from a bad situation. We ran with her and used assumed names. My real name is Piper and my sister is Kim not June. Our other companion is Melissa and that's her real name."

"But why were you running?"

"That is for Jess to say. We all happen to study or work for the same school in Toronto."

"You sure had me fooled."

"You only got some assumed names."

Kim came up with the baby and introduced herself under her real name and showed another Jessica. When Greg gently moved the blanket to one side so he could see the child, Jessica's hand rushed out quicker than I could blink and grabbed Greg's finger. Kim and I were shocked because this was like my overdrive ability.

Greg honestly did not believe his eyes and neither did anybody else. Each person believed they saw wrong and ignored the abnormality.

"She's got a good grip on me."

Kim said, "Perhaps she's making a citizen's arrest. You better come along peacefully or there'll be trouble."

Greg got Jessica in his arms but kept his nose and glasses out of Jessica's reach. He showed his wife the baby and they both cooed over her.

Herb said, "I think Uncle Greg has decided that he doesn't want any pain so he's not going to avoid arrest." There was some laughter but I was now studying Greg in much more detail.

Kim said to me, "He learned who Jess was a week after we left. He's still very curious as to why she was here and under false names."



"He's a cop and they are all curious. He can stay curious unless he found — Jess someplace."

"No, he didn't but he seems odd somehow."

"What do you mean?"

"I think he has a talent."



I knew this was not musical. "A natural talent?"

"Yes. He can read minds just a bit. I think he can sense a lie."

"Do you think Jessica can sense that and grabbed him?"

"I don't know but it could be true."

We shared our information with Herb, Ellen and Melissa to be on the safe side and to learn more.

When Greg learned I had a child too he said, "How did this happen to two sisters at near the same time?"

Kim said, "I think that you would have had a talk about the birds and the bees quite some time ago. Are you saying that you are that forgetful? If necessary Piper and I can sit you down and fill you in on the details."

Rose was now the one to laugh at her flustered husband. He was on the gaff now and didn't know what to say. I said, "Kim found a boyfriend and so did I. I was not going to let an older sister upstage me. What happened was more of a matter of hormones and finding a person I meshed with so well."

"You can go to school with children?"

"It's definitely a learning process. The father of Stanley goes to our school."

Greg's eyes shot to Herb but Herb was ready and had a calm expression. Greg said, "Stanley is not that popular of a name. Is he named after the boy or one of his relatives?"

"The name is more popular than you think. Herb's father has that name and so does Stan's grandfather. One of my cousins has that name too."

Greg had not heard the gossip yet so he was not privy to this piece of information. He was still curious and not sure if he should believe us. On the other hand he could not sense that we were lying.

When we were eating I suddenly heard Stan call, "Hungry!" He had not done this before and neither had Jessica.

A strange thing happened because over a third of those present looked at me. One woman said, "I heard your baby. I think she's hungry." None of the people recognised the call as mental and attributed it to Stan calling with a cry. I got up in a hurry and so did Kim because we didn't want to explain about mental communications to the family.

We all monitored the group and found that when people were presented with an impossibility, they simply found a logical substitute that fit better into their scheme of things.

Later that night I asked Ellen and Herb, "Greg has a natural talent for detecting lies. His son Josh is supposed to be good at numbers. Another of your relatives is a world renowned chef. Still another is a very lucky fireman. He had many brushes with fatal accidents but got his men out before a building collapsed or a car blew up. Do you think your family has this talent. Or would you call it luck?"

Ellen said, "My sister was always very lucky. When those scratch tickets came out, she would always win at least what she paid but usually just a bit more. Many times she bought nothing because the tickets didn't seem right. Strangely, she never won larger prizes."

Herb said, "My grandfather was said to have a healing touch. I don't know how true it was."

I said, "I wonder if Ellen had an ability she was not aware of?"

Ellen just thought and said, "I like healing and I'm good at it now. I was fairly good as a nurse."

Kim said, "I wonder how this is going to effect the children? Jessica moved her hand almost as fast as Piper could. When Stan called out I almost had another baby. Thank human nature for letting this sort of occurrence slide by."

The next day, Herb went to his lawyer to make sure his affairs were in order. The house had been paid off so there should not have been any problems. When Herb came back I knew he was still nervous. He had left Dr Vale's employment but that of the fire department had to be dealt with too.

Herb had already talked to the doctor and used the excuse about finding out about Nicki. He also used the need to get away from his past by finding a job some place away from Orillia and his memories of Nicki. The doctor was sympathetic.

The fire department was next and this time we all went. It was snowing hard but the snow removal equipment in the city was doing a fair job of clearing a path.

We stopped at the station where Herb usually worked out of, and we talked to his friends. We had his equipment he had to wear when going out on a call. It all had to be returned. Kim and I gave the excuse that we liked the idea of being firemen. One of the paramedics was a woman and this helped a lot. Amy was a nice person and liked the way we were all in shape. She loved the babies too and they seemed to like her.

To justify Herb's place in the school we talked about our medical training. We didn't cheat and use Herb's memories either. We had read his book and then found others that had more detail.

Amy said, "You sound like you have more training than I have. I wish I was as smart as you guys."

"It's not as easy as you think. The more active the mind the more chances there are to get in trouble. It takes a lot to keep our interest. Boys came close for a while and see what happened. We love mathematics, finances, biochemistry, history, psychology and medicine. It's hard to concentrate some times, especially at our age. We don't know what we want to do with our lives. We have to learn enough about a lot of subjects to even make a choice for what to specialise in."

Amy said, "I had it hard growing up because I was a tomboy. You have an even tougher problem with babies. You're lucky you have the school to help you."

The other paramedic talked about his past. He didn't go into details because it would rub his macho image a little too hard.

Ellen talked of her early years then her training in nursing. This was to justify her place in Albright. The talk though was interesting. Ellen was a lot like Amy was when young.

We had a nice meal and then Kim and I fed the babies. Some of the firemen liked to see teenage boobs but the one that liked it the most usually got to drain any milk that was left. He grew in such delightful ways.

The chief finally came to the station and Herb introduced us. Herb had to hand in his resignation and tried to make the best of it. Actually giving the resignation was a hard thing to do for him. The chief figured this out on his own. Herb went over what he was currently doing as a long lead up.

He had not come to the part where he would not be back yet when the alarms went off. The chief grabbed the phone even as a computer screen lit up giving some sketchy details. A school bus had been taking some students on a skiing holiday when it had been hit by a truck. The bus had gone through the guardrail and down an embankment.

The chief said, "There's a lot of people hurt. Herb, you interested in one more for the road before you leave us?"

"You knew?"

"It wasn't hard."

"I'll go. Ellen is a registered nurse and the girls have been trained and they are almost as good as paramedics. At worse they can assist."

He looked at us and I said, "There are too many hurt to be picky. We are not stupid girls though it may look that way sometimes."

"You can go as civilians giving first aid."

We gathered all the spare equipment they had at the station then hurried out. The fire truck and then the paramedic truck led the way. The tonnes of water in the first truck made sure it had good traction in the snow. This did not mean that our lighter vehicle did not slip. All of us used our flying talents to give a push one way or another to keep us going straight. This didn't take much work at all.

The babies were wide awake with the noise of the siren and our own excitement. We stayed behind the paramedic truck and it was behind the fire truck. We made good time but it was still almost fifteen minutes to the crash site. Herb, Ellen and I shared our knowledge of the area but it was Ellen that remembered an accident twenty years ago that killed a whole family. The embankment was steep.

The police were on the scene first. The firemen were appraised of the situation on the way and informed the police that we were with their group. People and cars were all over to gawk at the situation.

We got a sampling of what the police knew but it was hardly any because there was so many hurt. A school bus was struck by a pickup that was sliding out of control. The truck had changed lanes and hit the bus as it came around the bend. In a combination of the bus driver trying to avoid the truck, the inertia of the truck and centrifugal force, the bus hit the guardrail and headed down the embankment.

The bus was full of highschool students coming back from a school sponsored skiing trip. Thirty two students and the bus driver were in one vehicle while a woman and her baby were in the pickup.

The woman and baby were now dead. So were at least two students and the bus driver. The bus had gone nose down into a large rock after hitting three fair sized white pine. The back bumper was at least twenty metres from the road surface that it had just left.

Herb took visible charge of our group to avoid problems. In a situation like this we shared our thoughts and then proceeded to work but here we had to have Herb give verbal orders to show that we were working under his care.

We used our own first aid kit but had to supplement it with the equipment from the station. We assessed some of the students and all of them were in some form of shock. The police got some of the spectators to pull up a crash stretcher and the students were put into warm vehicles and sent to the local hospital.

Kim was our portable x-ray machine. She assisted us in setting bones and even sewing up a severed artery in one student. This one had lost a lot of blood. We elevated his feet and sent him up the hill as soon as we could.

A makeshift operating table was set up and then two more had to be made. Too many people would not make it to the hospital alive.

A young doctor by the name of Rajeck and two nurses arrived. Herb told him what was wrong. This one was actually not stuck up and listened.

My patient was a seventeen year-old boy. He was in shock from loss of blood and I had to jump on him to get his heart pumping again. I think it was my intensive use of healing that his heart started again. I had his coat off to work on him and actually did not want to cover him. The cold weather would hopefully keep his blood near his core and slow down his mental and physical processes.

Dr Rajeck worked on a similar wounds and I read his mind about what to do though I had made a habit of studying doctor's minds. He kept looking at Kim and I as if he never saw girls like us before. Kim ran around to give us the benefit of her sight though Ellen had been gaining this power too.

All of the medical personnel came around to check what we were doing. I had to explain all the time why I did something that encroached on a doctor's domain. I used all my logic and took their hands to show them where problems were and what the prognosis was. If they would live to get treatment in the hospital I just did first aid.

More and more people came and we were able to take a break. It was hard to leave but we had to get up to the road to take care of the babies.

We found one of the nurses in the van watching the children. She had been invited to come here to rest and even babysit in rotation.

The woman of forty two said, "Your babies are adorable. They're hungry and I would feed them myself but there are no bottles and I assume they are still breast fed."

Kim and I took off our coats and opened our blouses and began to feed the babies. Kim winced as Jessica started to suck hard. "They are adorable and hungry."

A truck had come and gave out coffee and food to those that were working. I had a coffee and ate some genuine police food. I liked plain donuts. We talked about what had happened for a while but then the nurse, Ellen, Melissa and Herb went back to work. Kim and I were bushed and just had to stay longer.

We were just finishing up when an Ontario Provincial Policeman knocked on the window in the side door. He could see us feeding the kids. We heard, "You have to move this vehicle."

Kim and I looked at each other. This man had some of the same attributes as Herb. He rang our chimes so to speak but not nearly as much as Herb did. We dove into his mind. This was Herb's cousin Jeff and the man Ellen had bought the pickup from. We had not detected this before because he had been a lot further away at the time.

I used my hand to beckon him and said, "Come on in, Peanut. We want to talk to you." There was too much noise so I pushed just a bit so he would think he was using his ears.

The door cracked open and he said, "You have to move this vehicle. It's in the way."

"Hi Peanut. We are staying with your grandmother Ellen and with Herb. We are kinda busy now. Will you drive the van where you want?"

"I didn't know this was Herb's. You can stay here for a while longer but it has to go."

"Ok, Peanut, Sir."

"How do you know my old nickname?"

"You were on duty when everybody was over at Ellen's place. We even know about the dimples in your bum and that scar on your leg."

Jeff was really embarrassed and said, "I've got to go. Maybe we can talk later."

Kim said, "Count on it."

We changed the babies and got out. The truck was warm and the cold air chilled us. Traffic was moving again and the last patient that needed speedy care had gone. There were only bodies left.

Herb helped all he could. There were parents around and they knew that their children were still down there in the snow. There were some spare blankets and I took one to an older woman that was crying on a younger woman's shoulder. I unfolded the blanket I carried and wrapped it around them both. The grandmother was cold and in shock.

Kim and I disbursed four blankets and I had two people urged to get into a warm police car to stay warm. I had to do a little urging myself to get the police to cooperate but they were good boys after all. It was probably all the blood that was on Kim and I that got them to be so nice.

Reporters were around too and we kept our faces away. It was just caution because someday we would need all the anonymity we could get. We stayed until the last body was loaded up and then we headed for the hospital to find out how 'our' patients were doing.

Besides the woman and her baby, there were at least two students and the bus driver dead when we arrived. Two more had died before we left and one more after reaching the hospital. Three more were on the critical list.

The waiting room was filled with crying people. We carried Jessica and Stan with us this time. The old woman I put a blanket around was here too because another of her grandchildren had been on the bus and was still clinging to life.

The woman came to us with three others trailing behind. The woman zeroed in on me and said, "My name is Maggie Helstrom. I want to thank you for all the work you did to save Jeremy. I know you tried very hard to save Daniel too. The firemen said they had to work on those that they could save but you tried anyway."

"I'm sorry that I could not save Daniel. He had a punctured lung and a rib had entered one of the major vessels leading to his heart. If I had the equipment I may have worked on both organs but I'm not a doctor yet. I did what I could to get him here safely but there are limits to what I can legally do. Thoracic surgery on the side of the road is frowned upon."

"But at least you tried. You even saved Jeremy."

"He was too stubborn to die. His heart quit on him but not for long."

"I think you're a stubborn young lady — and mother."

"I think I qualify on that count. I was far from alone. My sister Kim did as much as I did. Ellen, Herb and Melissa worked even harder than us. Then there is the firemen and the police. Dr Rajeck came with some now very tired nurses and they saved even more. Those are the ones that did the most good."

"They may have but not to my family."

"We are all a team. You cannot single some out. We all fought death. If any of them had not come forward then more may have died including Jeremy. I only had time to help him because the rest were working along side of us. If there were less of us then Jeremy may not have made it because I too had to follow a sort of triage. Helping those that could possibly survive is the basis of emergency aid. Some were going to die even if the bus had crashed in the hospital parking lot."

More people had come close to listen and then they asked about their children. Those we treated we talked about and listed what was wrong with each and just what we had done.

Reporters were here asking questions but we blocked any photographs. It was time to leave anyway and we all needed a shower and a good man to curl up with.

That evening we had reporters at the door and Herb was firm that we were not going to give an interview or sit for some photos.

Kim made a call home but they would soon read about it in the papers. Here is where we could talk more freely but phones were still dangerous.

A little later Herb's extended family arrived and we met some that we had not seen the last time. There were a lot more children and I guess the parents wanted the children to see us and perhaps work harder to get ahead. They considered us a positive influence but they didn't know the number of people we had to kill to get where we were.

Jeff came over with his wife Jacqueline. Jeff said, "How did you young ladies learn that medical training? The doc was impressed and so were the nurses."

I used a free hand to urge Herb forward and I said as if angry, "This bully made us learn. He's cruel. We have to learn, learn, learn."

Jeff looked at Herb and said, "I don't think it's that simple. I feel like you're just shifting the notoriety onto Herb's shoulders."

We all studied the man and I said, "You have your uncle Greg's gift for finding bullshit. It's good that you're a cop too. I figure you'll made a detective soon."

"How do you know that? We just met. All you know is my dimples."

"I hear they're cute." I turned to Jacqueline and said, "Are they?"

"Not bad. He stays in shape and I won't have problems with him. How do you know about them?"

"The family was over here a few days ago and girl talk got around to Jeff's cute butt. We also heard about some interesting tattoos on Herb's body. Some of the girls at the school would like to know more."

Jacqueline said, "Tell us about this school you go to. It must be very special."

"Let Herb tell you then I'll tell you the truth."

"Truth!" She looked at Herb and said, "Tell us about the school, Herb."

"It's run by a corporation. There's no tuition collected. No costs at borne by the students. Some of the kids are exceptionally smart and some are spoiled rotten. The others are normal and used to make sure the bright ones know how to deal with the rest of the world. This is like, on-the-job ethics in a way. The students even get paid to attend. They get and eclectic education that far surpasses what the province demands. They even use real money when the study the stock market. So far they have come out ahead. Some are as young as eight but Bobby will soon be nine. There's no upperlimit for a student's age."

Jacqueline looked at me for my version. I said, "The school is run by tyrants. We study most of the time then we're not developing our athletic skills."

Greg had come in and overheard me. He said, "Like shooting?"

"Hi Uncle Greg. It's nice to see you again. You're right. That's one of our sports."

I got a big smile at the name and appellation I used and he continued, "What else do you do?"

"You wanted to hear that we study medicine. This carries on to psychology. I still like chemistry and physics. As for exercise I run, swim, shoot a gun and a bow. I study karate. My favourite hand weapons are the knife and the sai dagger. I'm not bad with a bo. I'll take up a sword too one day. You never can be sure when we hear of modern pirates in the news."

"You certainly plan of defending yourself."

"I have a child to defend now but the exercise is to stay in shape mostly but also to help stay focussed."

"All five if not seven of you are remarkably focussed. The children do not fuss and actually seem to be listening to what we say. Do you have some magic potion that makes you this way?"

"In a way. The school population is small. We know each other very well. There's very little squabbling. Work is given in accordance to each individuals ability. If some need to study more then that person will get the time. We respect each other. Like a country, if we got big, we would lose this cooperative spirit.

"There are the occasional problems and there always are with humans. A high IQ is a rare gift but it sometimes comes with instability. So far we have not had any of those students."

"That is a remarkable school. I'd like to see it some day."

"Then come and visit. There are guest rooms. Breakfast is served at six sharp and you don't get any special privileges. If you have something interesting to give us then you get a chance to speak. Kinda like what it was at one time with the likes of Plato and Socrates. We can give you a chance to see how we learn and train."

"Actually, I'd love to visit."

Herb said to me, "Was that a good idea? He's a cop with a cop's instinct."

"Let him come for a visit. He will see how we operate or at least what we will allow the public to see. It's much better than hiding."

The next morning Greg was at the door at six. We were dressed and having breakfast when he arrived. I said, "Come on in Uncle Greg. We have fresh coffee and tea. Won't you have some with us?"

"Don't mind if I do."

He came in and took off his boots then sat at the table. He had copies of the Post, the Sun and the Toronto Star. There were headlines on the front page about the tragedy here yesterday.

We ignored the papers which irked Greg and he was hoping to catch us still in bed. My remark about six o'clock sharp had annoyed him. When he sat he took a sip and then said, "You guys made the papers. I hear the television news too."

Herb said, "I don't mind people knowing about the accident but I don't like my name mentioned. I was at lots of accidents and some were pretty horrific. My name wasn't mentioned then. It shouldn't be mentioned now."

"What about the rest? Maybe they like being called heroes. You all are even though Herb was trained to do this."

Ellen and then the rest of us were polite and said in many ways that fame was not what we were after. Actually we were all thrilled to be in the paper but it detracted from our anonymity. The fewer that knew of us the better.

Greg said, "I don't understand any of you. It's as if you want to hide the school."

Herb said, "The school is a group of geniuses. The general public gets bent out of shape and thinks of the school as elitist. Having good publicity is not too bad but no publicity is better. There's no reason to solicit students. A quiet school of well behaved students is a better endorsement."

"Surely good publicity like this will help?"

"It does temporarily but overall it's better for the school to keep its head down and plod along. It's not that we didn't get a feeling of accomplishment for helping but we'd rather do it anonymously."

Greg picked up one of the papers and opened it. He looked at me and said, "They have a photo of you here as you massaged Jeremy Helstrom's heart."

"Shit!"

"Surely faecal matter is more appropriate young lady?"

"I stand or rather sit corrected Uncle Greg."

"How did I get promoted to Uncle?"

"Most of the young folks call you Uncle Greg. We're taught to fit in if possible. Do you object?"

"Oh no! Not at all. Family makes us strong."

"You're absolutely right. The family is much stronger than the sum of its members. Besides you're kinda cute and cuddly and we can hit you up as a baby-sitter if need be."

I said this with a smile and he caught on but he was not adverse to watching kids especially if his wife Rose was around to do most of the work.

Later that morning Herb called the chief again to hand in his equipment. The man said, "Is it possible that you do this tomorrow at one? I'm busy now with all the paperwork."

Herb said, "That's ok. I had something for the city Firemen's Fund but we didn't get around to it."

"Thank you Herb. That's generous of you. Would you be so kind as to bring your group of people with you. The mayor would like to have a few words with them."

Herb was not that dense for a male and said, "On two conditions."

"What are they?"

"Everybody that helped is there too. We don't want to be singled out. The second is that we do not want any photos taken that get published. They could stay in city hall but not anywhere else. The school does not want the notoriety. It actually hurts the students."

"Why is that?"

"I can tell you more tomorrow if that's ok with you."

"That's fine."

Herb turned to us and said, "He's stalling for time to get a plaque or something else made. The mayor likes his picture in the paper. We're going to have to go but I think this could be managed."

We got other phone calls but most were for interviews. It was nice for us personally but not for what we were trying to do. Ellen was the most pleased I guess and this did not stop her from talking to friends. She downplayed her part. The people that visited knew her age and marvelled at what she had been able to do.

Ellen tried to be the perfect hostess and we helped. Part of this was getting dressed up as ladies and keeping the babies near. Herb made an appearance then disappeared. It was nice to talk to people but after a while I wished I could have disappeared too.

The Helstrom family visited and gave their thanks once more. Jeremy was still in ICU and looked much better. We found out that the boy had recently diagnosed with bladder cancer. They were going to operate in a month. Maggie and Jeremy's mother Ruth were very worried now that they might lose another boy.

I had not seen the disease while looking through his body but then again I was looking for injuries. He might have a better chance now because of all the healing I tried to get his body to do.

The day was trying for all of us and we stopped the ringer on the phone from working. Once we went to bed we forgot all about our troubles as Herb then Ellen were attacked. We were careful of Melissa because of what was in her womb.

Herb wanted to leave to get away from the confusion but Ellen liked the attention. Well, we all did but it was like a drug we had to resist.

Herb phoned the mayor at nine and made sure the man was aware of our concern for photographs. He tried to avoid the answer until Herb flat out said, "If we see a camera we're going to leave." This seemed to work very well.

The hospital was our next place to visit. Many of the students had been sent home but not all of them. We made the rounds. Some knew of us from our descriptions and others were in no condition to read the papers. In all the cases we touched the patients and fed our healing power into them.

Jeremy was awake and his mother Ruth was in the room. After an overly polite greeting I checked on Jeremy and found some blood clots forming. There was no way we could justify knowing this so we used our own methods to break the clots down and then see why they were being formed.

We must have been quiet a long time because Ruth was concerned. Ellen said, "I was a nurse for 36 years. Over that time I got a feeling for the patients. I'm not a doctor but the doctor should monitor Jeremy for blood clotting."

"How do you know?"

"Just a feeling. If I'm right then Jeremy stays healthy. If I'm wrong then you know he has no clotting. If you have problems consult another doctor."

Jeremy said, "I have to say thanks for what you guys did. I heard I wouldn't be alive if you had not come."

Since he was looking at me, I said, "We love to help. All of us are in medicine or are going into that field."

"I heard you're only fifteen."

"Our school teaches a lot more than most. We even live on the school property. This means we get to study a lot more than you can and then we get pushed into exercises and sports. There is some free time but not much."

Herb changed the subject and said, "I teach what I learned to become a paramedic and then a PA. Ellen has a gift that could get her into trouble. It saved many lives but it's better if you don't mention where you learned about clots."

Ruth said, "I won't say a word."

We could read her mind and Herb said, "Would you be so kind as to tell me exactly what that means?"

Ruth paused and said, "It means I won't tell anybody."

"Not your mother, not your best friend, not your family? Ellen would be harassed by people. She could have avoided this if she said nothing but this would adversely effect Jeremy. A juicy piece of gossip is hard not to pass on."

"I know what you mean."

Jeremy said, "If she talks I'll phone you. She loves to gossip —"

"I do not, Jeremy!"

Jeremy just stared at her and said nothing.

We visited the rest of the students in ICU then had time to go to a restaurant. Even here people pointed to us and whispered.

There was not even a good place to park at City Hall. When we looked for a spot we found that photographers were outside waiting for us but were hidden from view. This effectively bypassed the restrictions on the Mayor but we went in a side door.

The ambulatory students and their families were present as were other students. Many of the people that had helped were present too. The Mayor gave a speech, then gave everybody a plaque and thanked us for what we had done. The fire chief gave his own speech and gave a medal to Herb. He had apparently done nothing that the other firefighters had done but the chief said he was a civilian when saving people.

Herb was our representative and thanked the mayor and the chief. Herb was fairly silver-tongued in his remarks and handed over the papers for his home. Then he said, "This is for the Firemen's Fund. Do with it as you wish."

After the chief looked at it he said, "This is the title to your home?"

"I have a new home and the fund is always short of money. If you guys come after us for the blankets we used then it is going to have to come out of what you get for this."

There was a chuckle and more hand clasping as Herb stepped away from the microphone. The mayor asked, "Will you tell us about your home?"

"I'd rather not Sir. The school does not appreciate outside interest."

"Surely just a little."

"I suppose you would like just a little audit of the funds used by the city? After all it would only be a little bit of trouble for you and all the departments."

"I see your point, Mr Stewart."

When we left, there were photographers at all the doors so we waited until somebody left and we followed while pushing to everybody nearby that we were not here.

Ellen's lawyer was contacted and given clearer instructions. Ellen wanted the school to have the house and most of the bills could just go to the school to be paid.

There were visitors that night as we prepared to leave. There were photos taken now but they were all for family albums. It felt good to be in a larger family even if they were normals or nearly so.

When we got home, it was a relief to not have a reporter near. Some had come to the school but they had learned nothing important but not so little that we seemed to horde secrets.



-------

Chapter 4


We went back to the boring life of school work but we also carried on with our research. The lab that had made the drugs and the Abicore was mainly used for purifying body fluids that had the new version of Abicore in them. It served for our chemical research but this was minimal at the time. We knew that soon it would have to expand. The pack made long term plans and they included what we were going to do to help humanity.

Another lab was set up but we had to make our own tools. ESP did not use the electromagnetic spectrum so we had to devise experiments to see what would work. In electronics a coil of wire or two conductors that were near each other but not touching had certain effects on an electric current.

So far we had found that a thin sheet of gold foil tended to block thought but fine particles mixed into molten aluminum worked even better. Later we used powdered aluminum and steel dust and mixed in an acrylic binder. This worked better.

I just hoped that what we were after was not the same as how the normals were looking for the causes of gravity. We already knew facts that the researchers would love to know. Some of this was directly related to our ability to fly.

Theories abounded but we had to use the scientific method to see which ones were true. The problem was that too many of them were true and we had difficulty finding the right sort of tests.

Our abilities were all increasing but a numerical analysis said that we would reaching our maximum soon. Taking more Abicore was an option but we had stopped using it. The natural method was best. Our dreams rested in our children because they may be powerful enough to make a real difference. Hopes of finding anything really significant were slim until we had enough time and people to dig deeper into physics. This might be a blind alley. Our physics dealt with only three dimensions. We may have to un-learn some facts before we could go forward.

On another topic, the Post had a large article on how a great many terminally ill children were making miraculous recoveries. We knew this would happen but it was distressing. People now would be actively looking for the cause.

One young child had awoken while being worked on. Melissa had pushed calming thoughts into the boy's mind. He had seen four people dressed in masks though the costumes were not usually worn now. The boy went back to sleep. We didn't know what he told his parents but he might not have said anything. Melissa looked like a poor super hero because we could see that she was obviously pregnant. This also made her more in tune to the children we helped.

Other hospitals were targeted too but this was after the fact of the statical anomaly.

On the seventeenth of February, I got an urgent call from Cathy Keep. "Kelly is missing. I can't find her anywhere. She's always punctual."

I sent a call to Nicolas, "Home in on Kelly Seal's phone." I got a single grunt and knew he was working on it.

I said to Cathy. Has she found new friends?"

"She is a wonderful child. She always makes friends and she's very cautious."

"How long has she been gone?"

"She said she was going to be back five hours ago."

"Any customers take a special interest in her?"

"Always but they are nice about it. Everybody has to pay but they are getting a great deal and know it. I don't think she is just on a date because she knows she can just phone. They know how I worry."

"Was she with others?"

"We always go out in groups but she disappeared from the Eaton Centre. She just went back to return a pair of slacks. As soon as the rest found her missing they followed the routines and phoned then searched as a group."

Nicolas said, "I found her phone. Seven kilometres north east of the Eaton Centre."

"Everybody into the cars. Treat this as a kidnapping. Widest search pattern."

I said to Cathy, "We may have a lead. I'll call back when I know more."

"Can I come? I love my girls."

"No! We have to go." I hung up the phone and raced for the car. We had one esper in each car so we could cover the maximum area. Nicolas stayed behind to coordinate. Usually we took some strattera but it dulled our perceptions and we needed everything we had.

It was fifty three minutes to get to the location Nicolas gave us. All the time we had been calling Kelly hoping she would be able to form a thought that we could find.

William found the phone but a man of twenty was using it. It took seconds to find that the man sold drugs and had just bought the phone. We needed the man to think of the character so we got a visual as soon as possible.

The car stopped and William raced out with his mask on. The man did not see William coming until he was thrown against the wall. The phone fell from his fingers.

"Who sold you the phone?"

The man was not intimidated by William until he was punched eight times and thrown down. Some punishing holds were applied. "Tell me who sold the phone to you."

"Get off of me."

William dislocated one shoulder then the other. The young man was in shock. Another man came running to the scene. He was friends with the drug dealer. William jumped up, ran, then flew through the air nearly ten metres to kick the man in the chest then run back.

"Answer now or I will rip your arms off." A little twist helped.

"I — I don't know. I just paid twenty bucks."

A twist and then another was used because the man was lying. He did know the area the man was usually seen in. This was more south and we hurried off. Nicolas called the police to report a gang fight over dope. If they hurried, they would get two of them.

It was ten minutes later that we arrived at the new area. It was Kim that called out, "I have her. Oh god, he beat her unmercifully."

Herb called out, "You better be invisible. You can go in but wait for us to get in the apartment. Don't go in alone."

"You better hurry. I'm going to kill the son of a bitch."

I actually got to the building before Herb and went invisible. The driver left immediately but would stay near. The front door was designed to keep people out but it was blasted in like a truck drove into the lobby. Two sets of doors were flung into the cement on both sides. The thick aluminum twisted. One old woman was crouched on the floor. She had not seen Kim come in but just the doors flying inward. She wanted to forget this as fast as she could.

"The person that gets here after Herb, take the old woman to her apartment. She's in shock."

The doors to the steps had been locked but the door was far down in the next landing. I raced up seven floors using my overdrive. When I got to the landing, I saw rubble down the hallway. When I got close, I saw the door laying inside an apartment.

Kim had a naked man by the throat and the nuts. The man would be screaming except he was now unconscious. Kim gave a good squeeze and left the man to go to the bed where Kelly was tied.

We had just got her untied when Herb and Brandon entered the room looking for threats. Herb said, "The cops are coming. Let's get out of here."

My mind was racing. Find Kelly's clothes and anything else she had. Wrap her up in the sheet. From the pack I got an up to the second placement of the two police cars racing this way. There was no way we could get down in time.

"Get to the roof. We'll float down or over to another building."

On the way out I saw that the man was going to die. That was fine but I wanted him to suffer. Brandon and I commanded the blood vessels that lead to his crushed testicles to constrict. There was blood everywhere and he may just survive this.

The elevator took us up and an old couple wanted to get on. My push that they leave was followed very vigorously. Brandon got up onto the roof and surprisingly Kim could not do it. She was bone weary and so was I.

I formed a shield around us to keep the cold wind off and we floated down while invisible. We flew over a shorter public building and then to the street. A car pulled up. Kelly, Herb and Kim got in the back seat while Brandon and I got in the front. It was a block later that we became visible.

The driver said, "How is she?"

I replied, "She'll be ok," but I added, "I hope."

We raced home as we poured our healing power into Kelly. She regained consciousness a few times and smiled. She felt safe now. After a half hour there was no more we could do for her body and I started to work on Kelly's mind. The best thing to do was to delete her recent memories but we could not do that yet. The best we could accomplish would be to transfer them to her long term memories. If they went far enough then perhaps, only perhaps, she would view the facts as something that had happened to her long ago.

I gathered the rest of the pack so they could see what I was doing as I tried to heal her mind. We were home but stayed in the car for a few minutes before I finished. Kelly was then hustled into the house and to the infirmary.

I remembered the first Kelly that had worked in this very area. My memories were fond of her but she did exactly what she was told. In the end she used a gun against us and had been killed. I hoped that the Kelly we had would not as confused because of the conflicts in her past.

Kelly woke up again as she was being cleaned. The guys had fled but only for a while. I went over what had happened to the girl in front of me and worried about disease. At least pregnancy would be ruled out because of the pill. The girl came to the school and had fun with the boys as well as the girls. She suffered from burns, bruising and a torn anus.

She had been raped many times by three men. The now sterile perp was the one who snatched her from the mall. Marlo Jenkins worked there and managed to drug the girl and then shove her into a large box on wheels. The box went through the service entrance to his delivery truck.

Two friends had come to the party when invited. At the time Kelly was sedated. When she woke up she was beaten for the fun of it by Jenkins. The other two had already left.

From the office, I heard, "Piper, I think there were cameras in the lobby of that building."

I searched my memories and saw a camera hid by a tall fake tree, "Shit, you're right. Let's go. I hope the police haven't got the tape yet. We could be in deep shit."

We raced back downtown in three cars. We might need to be in more than one place at once. There was no need for the entire pack so only some of us went.

The street was cordoned off and we had to walk. The police were worried because of the way the doors had been blasted through. A bomb disposal squad was investigating and doing so very slowly.

I read the cops near me and so did the rest. Jenkins was in the hospital. The guy was a former cop that had been asked to resign some six years ago. I had not got this information because I saw no need to dig through the muck.

The police kept the people back and had even evacuated the building as a precaution. It took fifteen minutes to find the super. He had to stay nearby in case he was going to be asked questions. He answered ours in a way too.

There were four cameras in the building. They were accompanied by a motion detector. Every fifteen seconds the feed from one camera would change to the next. The motion detector could override the timer and one camera could focus on some action. If another camera clamoured for attention, a backup recorder would take over and monitor the remaining three cameras.

The tapes ran for over a day and were changed in the morning. The old tapes were stored in case something came up but they were reused in ten days. The equipment and tapes were in the office just off the lobby. They were further sealed in a locked metal cabinet. Police were all over but the ones inside were in kevlar armour.

Herb said, "How are we going to get by? There's broken glass all over the floor. The door's locked. If we get the door open, it's sure to be seen. The windows are permanently sealed."

"They're going to know we came back. The windows are our best choice."

Dina was with us this time and she stayed close to the front of the building so she could see the door to the office. She was invisible or she would have been compelled to move.

Herb, Kim and I went around the building. We found police cars nearby. When Dina said it was relatively clear, I formed a shield. This was shaped the way I did when flying so it was long and narrow for the least wind resistance. This time I made it more blunt to contain the broken glass and hopefully some of the noise.

When the police got in their cars to get warm. I pushed quickly. There was a big shock as if I had run into a mountain and in effect, I had. Herb and Kim were in the room even before I could get up.

The police had heard something and came out to look but did not know where the sound had come from. They walked toward the broken window. Kim and Herb needed more time. I raced to the police cars they left. The engines were still running. I took each of them out of park and into drive.

The cops had just made it to the window that had a sill two metres up. Kim and Herb were working hard because the bomb squad had heard the noise too.

The police noticed their cars and one gave chase. I turned the siren on the one I was in and fled. This car was aimed at a snowbank but the other was heading toward the street.

Two cops from the front ran around the building and had to think fast to stop the car.

The cop at the window was getting up when he fell backwards. Kim and Herb flew out with a bag in their hands and an soda bottle. We went over a fence and then down the block to an alley were we stopped making the compulsion for people to not see us.

Kim was excited and her eyes almost gleamed. "Did you see my ninja attack?"

I said, "Ahhhh the old ginger ale in the face move. Only the old masters were able to pull that off correctly."

"There are not many that could do that with the accuracy involved."

"You're right." I said smugly, "I got to drive a police car and turn on the siren."

"You always were a showoff."

Herb said, "Girls! We have some others to catch."

We picked up Dina and the drivers took us to the nearest hospital. Jenkins was currently in surgery but that did not stop us from walking through his mind.

After we got a rough idea of what the man was like, Kim said, "I should have squeezed his head that way too. He has a conscience but he suppressed it until it doesn't bother him anymore. His two friends are not much better."

Dina asked, "We going to crush their nuts or get them arrested? One is into importing drugs. We can get some justice from both."

"I like doing both but we're trying to act civilised."

We stayed longer to find out more about Mr Jenkins. When we collected all we thought pertinent, I went into Jenkins' mind and did some rearranging. What the man feared the most was rats and spiders. He would feel them coming closer to get him unless he started confessing to the police about everything he ever did wrong. When he went to court, he might get off as a nut case but they would not let him go. I just had no pity on him at all and I didn't care if I was civilised or not.

We split up to find Carmen Bodardo and Richard Magnas. They were at work when we got to each of their addresses. One worked at Pearson International Airport and the other was a short haul trucker.

The airport was crowded and people were excited. Their minds pounded on ours. Drugs helped but I figured that we were building up a sort of defence. Our children would have to learn about this to get along and I was determined to find a way.

Carmen Bodardo was an elusive person to find. It took three hours to locate him and we all had headaches. We never saw the man and had to go by what Jenkins had in his mind. This meant we could not get much. He was also in a high security area so we could not get to him.

In the course of our search for the man we had run across hundreds of people that should die not just go behind bars. Most came from other countries as businessmen. Their ways of doing business were even more vicious than local businessmen simply because ours were constrained by some sort of law.

I did not mind if they fought among themselves but innocents or ones that were nearly so were eaten or destroyed. To clean up the world, five percent of the people would have to die and incarcerate double that. The ones left outside the bars were not that much better.

One man riding on the plane was watching three mules carrying drugs in various orifices. I'd like to nab this guy but we were not here to catch him.

The exodus from the school had started. The pack went out to heal those we could and this time our group would try to heal humanity by removing a small colony of disease organisms.

There were other disease fighters here too. They worked undercover to gather information about smuggling and drugs. Not all of these were clean and one was working with the importers.

When Bodardo got off, we were there to investigate those coming on shift and those going off. It didn't take long to see what Bodardo was really like. We searched his mind plus three others that were involved with moving drugs through customs.

One average looking guy by the name of Patrick Lindsey was actually an investigator sent to pick up information about Bodardo and two others. He did not know about a third nor did he know that another cop by the name of Ken Morgan worked with him and who was not that clean.

I had an idea and Dina and I followed Pat Linsey until we called his cell phone.

I said, "Hello Pat. My code name is Zip. I'm part of an allied organization that is after the drug importers the same as your group is."

"Hi. Sorry, you have the wrong person. My name's Frank. You sound like a young lady."

"I am a young lady. You're Patrick Lindsey." I went on to talk about his family, who is boyhood friends were and then his present circumstances. I didn't leave out the people he worked for and with.

He said nervously, "How do you know all this?"

"We work for the same organization that pays your salary. We get our orders the same as you and it's time that you were informed of a few additional facts."

"Why don't you go through channels? Hell, a cell phone is not that secure."

"We know but Bodardo, Carver and Wa already figure you are a plant. We know that Sandas is also one of their group. The other Frank in your group is actually Ken Morgan. He's a fellow cop but not as clean as you are."

"What do you want with me?"

I had come up with a cover story and said, "I'm part of an experimental group. We are not quite like the old television series called 'Mod Squad' but we are close. You are not making much headway and we do not want to break our cover. The logical solution is to feed you facts. You check them out and see if they are true or not. If we lie, then you disregard us."

"Why not tell Hammer?"

Hammer was a code name for his boss. "Hammer has not completed our security checks yet."

"Talk to his boss."

"He is in the same boat. You passed the tests and it's just a matter of seeing if you will be our stalking horse. For helping us you get the credit."

"How can you prove any of this?"

"Three mules came through with condoms up their ass, their cunt and in their stomach. How about we get them arrested and you get to see if they have anything interesting."

"How are you going to do this? Unlawful search and seizure is going to get the cases thrown out of court."

"Get in your car and drive down Eglinton until you get to Dufferin. The transference of the drug and the payment of money is in a converted van. I have this feeling that a rival gang will attempt to seize the drugs. You will see this and anonymously call the police.

"Gunfire will keep the occupants in the van until the police come. You will read in the paper in a few days, if there was any drugs found and then how much. You'll then have a valid reason for believing me."

Pat said, "That's dangerous. This is not the movies."

"I agree but it's cold out. It's late. Few people are around and you get to call the police before all the fun starts."

"Why don't you make the call?"

"I will if you want. I just want to prove that we're on the same side."

"I want to see you."

"I'm cute but anonymous. Perhaps later if the situation warrants. Now do you want to see three mules drop off their cargo or not. You are not going to participate."

Pat was trying to get a handle on this. He was exposed and vulnerable. The stakes in this game were death or worse. He didn't know if I were trying to trap him. Then he remembered all I knew about him and I did not have to trap him at all. He thought he was going to be set up to be killed but that could have been done without telling him anything.

Abruptly he said, "I'll do it. Lead the way."

"You hurry or we will be late. We are not exposing our vehicle to you. The last mule left five minutes ago in a taxi."

We were already ahead of him and drove more aggressively. Traffic was light and there was no snow. It was not too hard to find the van in a parking lot. A car beside it had two men and one of the mules in it. The van was used to provide some privacy so the drugs could be extracted.

Dina could see through thin materials and the walls of the van were not proof against her sight. A woman was sitting on a toilet getting rid of the a condom.

Nicolas was making the call for us after I phoned him with the details. The police would not arrive until after the woman finished. She was paid and she quickly left.

Pat arrived and I phoned him and said without preamble, "The woman coming from the parking lot was just paid eight thousand dollars in American money. She just got off flight 802. There is a car beside the van with two guards and one male mule in it. He is being called into the van to drop his load and I do not mean figuratively."

"What about the police?"

"They were called almost four minutes ago. We are into the police computer and they should be here in three minutes."

"How—did you do that?"

"Same employers. Remember?"

When the police were close I said, "Pat, you better get further away. They are going to want to talk to everybody."

"I'm alright."

"Suit yourself. You're a big boy."

Dina and I were already invisible and within a metre of the two vehicles. Dina and I waited for the man to finish with the purgatives. If the condom opened inside the man he would die.

He just finished puking when Dina and I started shooting at the vehicles so they could not function. Now the police would have a valid reason for approaching. The men dived to the floor and we shot just above their prone bodies. We moved around a lot because they started to shoot back.

The police blocked one of the entrances and sought cover. I shot out a window of the parking lot kiosk and the police shot back. We went straight up and then shot down after gaining a low roof.

One guy was getting away though. When we stuck our heads out we were shot at by both the police and the drug runners.

We shifted location again and this time it was Dina that was able to shoot the perp in the arm. The cops were close but I raced in and used a kick to the jaw to put him out.

The cops had the guy and went searching for us. We were on the next street. I phoned Pat and said, "It's over Pat. They got everybody and only two wounded and they were not the police."

"There were lots of you there. I saw gunfire from nine positions."

"Sorry to disillusion you but there are a lot less than you think. Now see if you can extricate yourself and I'll tell you about the group you are investigating."

Pat managed to get away. The police were too busy to give chase but others that were approaching were not as encumbered. We had to reference the police computer to give him directions on how to avoid some unpleasantness. Once he was clear, I gave him in-depth information on Wa. He was actually the one in command of this group. He was also a good actor.

When the batteries in the radio were giving out I said, "I'll email your account at your home. You can try to trace it but you're wasting your time." I then gave him a long password to open the file.

Dina said, "Bodardo went home to sleep. Our people are pissed off that we had the all the fun."

"It was exciting but being shot at is no fun."

I was far from tired when I got home. Kim and Herb had made an official looking report and Dina and I added to it. This looked odd because it did not have all the dates and assessments that a police document would have so I altered it to be like a personal letter. At the end I wrote, "My husband is part of the team. He's not angry that you went on a date with some of us."

The file was sent to Nicolas and he encrypted it. Soon it was sent through a long chain of sites just to be extra safe.

Kelly was still sleeping and two of the girls were sleeping with her. When we peeked into her mind, she was only upset with being kidnapped. She was also sore from the pain but we had mitigated most of it for her.

We dug into some of the government computers to find out about Pat Linsey. Computers were not easy to access but Nicolas was able to mimic how the legitimate users did it. He gave himself administrator privileges and just before he left, he altered the file so his incursion was not referenced anywhere.

CSIS and the RCMP had almost the same file on him. On a whim, I had the reports made by his superiors altered to give Pat a better assessment. If we could use Pat in the future, it would be good if he had a position with more authority.

While we were at it, we studied other profiles in the highest security areas. Leaving whimsy aside, we added our own biography. Code words were used in place of names in this area. Nicolas had a big smile behind a block and also provided us with lower level identities that would be easier to find if we had to ask for help.

Bobby was sleepy from the work he had done and asked Nicolas, "What did you do?"



"I gave us the highest pay scale. People reading the file should think we are very important."

"How much do I make?"

"I gave us a two hundred thousand dollar salary."

"That all? I could make that in a week and do it honestly."

"We have to start small, Little Brother."



Bobby always liked that term and we used it especially when he was down. Now he was just sleepy. Herb scooped him up and took him to bed. Bobby was very smart and talented but he was still a little boy then again so was Herb.

We usually slept four hours but could get by with less. It all had to do with how we organised our brains. We did this with the power of healing. Tiffany went down to the hospital and got near Marlo Jenkins. There were police outside his door and two more inside with a tape recorder. Apparently Jenkins was more than just desperate to get everything off his conscience.

Tiffany studied what had been said then pushed suggestions to Jenkins so that some details came out much clearer. We did not have to know how many bicycles he had stolen as a boy.

The people that had died at his hands and those that he had witnessed got the cops a lot more interested.

From the minds of the police, Tiffany found that they were perplexed about the explosions because no residue was found. They figured it had to be an explosive because of the sheer force used to drive the doors and glass into the concrete walls. We wouldn't mind finding out how Kim did it too but she was too angry at the time to remember just how.

At my suggestion, Nicolas went back into the RCMP computer and found out about Pat's boss and then his boss. We decided to search further and then plant better identities.

The former Minister for the Federal Department of Fisheries had recently died so we made links from our supposed organisation back to that federal department. Nicolas had to work a long time to find the computer handling the Minister's documents. We added some of our own and most were encrypted. It now looked like a specific ministry was supporting us and giving us some legitimacy.

Nicolas' work was not done. More data had to be seeded in other machines so an investigation would not see the files as an obvious plant.

Stored email was then planted as if it came from reputable sources talking about our group. Little information was given beyond the fact that we were usually young so we could use some top secret cybernetic hardware. This would make our abilities seem technological in nature and thus plausible.

This concept tickled the group even more than making costumes. There was no shortage of ideas. Points were argued out and then voted on. It would now look as if we had engineers and scientists by the dozens helping us do great things.

The metal frame that was supposed to augment our strength was resurrected and given some legitimacy. A jet pack could push us at high speeds and long distances. This meant that we had to wear a concealed harness. These products were actually on the market for a quarter of a million dollars each. We would make something that looked similar and worked better.

A sonic imaging device would allow us to see through thin flexible material including the metal on an automobile. A communications system that used high frequency sound as well as ultra high frequency radio was listed as being so small they could fit within the ear. Our lowest vocal response could be transmitted.

We left out the explosive, that had nothing to show for it later. Light armour formed of energy was listed but it would not work against bullets. Some people wanted Batman capes so we could fly openly. All this would get us into trouble even without them finding our we were espers. People would come from all countries to find out what we were supposed to know. For this reason, everything was stated as experimental, dangerous and prone to failure since we were working on the leading edge.

A highly improved lie detector was hinted at that was as small as a cell phone. This would allow us to ask questions of suspects so they would think along the tracks we wanted. A speed enhancement drug was just listed. If I ever had to use my speed I wanted an excuse for it to be ready.

Years ago, Israeli Intelligence had broken into the Canadian government computer system. They found out about our secret plans for a fifty man birchbark war canoe. It was going to be powered by not one but two 9.9 Hp Evinrude outboard motors. The other data they found was just as interesting. Since then security had increased but not as far as it could. This lack of initiative at securing our data allowed us to get into our country's computers with relative impunity.

The data that was safe was added to the government computers and the pack was now anxious to add more.

The school had a wide range of comic books and even one father read them avidly. I won't mention his name though.

Many of the ideas sprang from the oddly coloured pages. Some ideas went the other way because comics were drawn and dialogue added. I had to worry about this because those figures in the comics were the pack and the students. We now seemed to be forced to live up to the aspirations of those two dimensional figures. It was not logical, it was not rational but it was what a human would do.

That day we found Richard Magnas, the other man to have sex with Kelly. He was a small time hoodlum with aspirations of hitting the big time. There was inside knowledge of some crimes and this we stored away for later.

He had a family like Carmen Bodardo and both men were not as bad as Jenkins. Magnas soon found that when he thought of rape he got an overwhelming need to go and confess. The guilt would be something he could not quite live with if he did this again. Even though he was raised a Baptist, he would go to confession as a Roman Catholic. The penalty did not seem to normally fit the crime but in this case the guilt, fear and revulsion would make him reform.

Kelly got up and moved around with only a little difficulty. She could remember the rape and abduction but it was as if it happened years ago. It hit her hard because of her current pain but also how solicitous the rest of us were treating her. This had to change quickly but the students were not as good at being actors.

It was hard to suppress some good human emotions but I tried to do just that. She was healed more but she could not take much. She knew by now what had happened to Jenkins personality. The information was exposed to her and then what we did. When she learned of the severity, she was pleased with the punishment. Carmen Bodardo's punishment was yet to be handed out. It would be similar to Magnas' but we also wanted to destroy the drug pipeline.

There were enough leads in Bodardo's mind to bring us to the person two levels up. We were near his place before noon to get an accurate reading on him. James Watson was a lawyer and businessman and one of his businesses was drugs. He had been tied in with Sheila Knox but not in selling drugs. He was not big enough. Instead she used him when somebody had to be hurt bad or just disappear for good.

Joy and Eric went to take on Watson. The boy was thirteen and three years older than his partner. Joy was the leader though just because of her experience. The two were not forming a family but the two tended to stay together usually. This would probably change as they got older and we knew it was natural. Joy's appetite for gratification may mean that she had to have three or four sexual partners.

Getting close to Watson was a job even for two children. The man had four security people and one of those drove his car. He entered and left his building by an underground garage. A second car always went with him.

We could read his mind but not well. We had to form a sort of bond for the information to move quicker. It helped if we could get the person to think on the subject instead of us digging for hours. He had a meeting with his boss to explain how the latest shipment of drugs had been seized.

Joy and Eric learned of the destination and their driver managed to lead the way to another office building downtown. Again it was controlled access. They could get in but the cameras would pick them up.

From a sampling of those entering the building, the majority of the businesses were legitimate. Finding the people using the illicit businesses was difficult because the people entered and left by the underground garage.

The car and driver stayed near until Watson left and then his car was temporarily blocked by our car. There was enough time to make contact with the man so his brain could be adequately read.

The three stayed the day until Mr Luigi Paonessa left the building. His car was stopped by a taxi that had engine problems. This had been brought on by fifty dollars in the cabby's pocket and fifty more when he did his job.

Paonessa's security helped the cabby push the car to a vacant spot on the street. We learned that Paonessa's boss was in Montreal. We also found out that Paonessa had a lot more dealings with Knox but not directly. He had also been one of the men that had found test subjects for Knox. The two had not had time to delve that deep because they had a time limit to how long the car could be held up.

Two pieces of data would interest Pat. A flight would be coming in tomorrow at eleven AM with a four kilos of heroin hidden on the plane. It was assumed that somebody that cleaned the plane would remove the drugs. The second detail was that a shipment of canned hot sauce was coming into Montreal in a week. The tins had been sealed and then washed in solvent before the labels were put on. Three pallets had something besides hot sauce in the cans.

Cocaine had been purchased from the Columbians and then shipped to Jamaica. The traces of hot sauce on the cardboard made the drug dog's job almost impossible.

When Eric and Joy got home that night, they gave us all of what they knew. Eric was given the job of formulating a report that only mentioned the shipment arriving by air in Toronto.

Nicolas sent the document off and did some checking of his own. He said, "There were some search queries for 'Zip' in the database in the government computers. So far they have not dug deep enough to find a reference to us."

"I was hoping Pat would remain quiet but he is a good agent. I assume they tried to trace our first email?"

"Give me a minute but it sounds logical." Nicolas had five minutes and said, "They did a fair search but it was done by someone that did not know how to gather as much data as he or she could."

"They are not ready yet to learn of us even at the lowest level. When we talk again, I'm sure that there will be some people trying to trace our call."

"We can keep them guessing. I had a Department of Health computer in the loop and I can add more."

"You do that, sweety." Nicolas blushed a bit but he knew that I loved him.

"I'll do the Department of Defence next time but hide it fairly well."

That night Ellen, Brandon and Anthony drove out to Mr Paonessa's home. It was a secure building but not from people that could fly. Anthony had developed a shield finally and he used it to keep the wind off the rest of his group while they monitored those in the house.

When they came back home three hours later, Ellen said, "That man had the two mules that got away killed. He's waiting for the next to get out so he can kill him too. He thinks they were the leak."

"I guess you better send off a report to Pat. He's our liaison now, for better or worse."

The rest of us went out to use our healing. I'd rather use it on Paonessa to give him pain, lots of pain.

We were at the airport the next day to await the arrival of the plane from Jamaica. So were a lot of others. Pat was not around but the people he worked with were.

After an hour and a half the custom's people found the drug with the help of a dog. Nobody had come to retrieve it. This meant either a sloppy operation where the raid was detected or there was a leak in the police task force.

We stayed to mid afternoon and scanned the cleaners. There were two people that work for the police as informants. One of these was supposed to pick up the drugs. He was also working both sides of the street. Two others had moved drugs in the past. A fifth man watched the other three under his control. He didn't touch the drugs but to just monitor. This man had been anonymously tipped and he figured it was a cop.

None of the cops and agents we came across had tipped the opposition off. We crossed these names off of the list that Pat Linsey knew. This still left thirteen people at his level or above. The men and women involved in this particular raid were not told until just before. The trouble was that the phone call came after the objective was stated. This meant nothing because a prudent person would not want his place in the hierarchy known by something as simple of who knew when the warning was given.

The partially failed raid still meant a lot of paperwork. A successful one meant even more. We went to the people that knew but weren't here.

It was later that night that we found that Tom Henderson had released the data. This was 'Hammer'. He was a person that should not be a cop. He got pushed around too much. His wife came from a wealthy family and wanted to continue the same lifestyle she was accustomed to. Even his two kids pushed him around by emulating their mother.

Tom would not think of hurting somebody so he was just a schmuck that could not get out of a bad situation. I found him contemptible for being weak but I could not see throwing him to the wolves.

We continued the search to be thorough and it was good that we did because Tom's immediate supervisor was the one behind all this. Tom was just the guy that would take the blame if anything went wrong.

Izzy Carling used Tom whenever he could and Tom did not even suspect it. Izzy had not recruited Tom but had left that work for others after he singled Tom out for a patsy and a scapegoat.

Izzy went home late that night and we followed close enough to read his mind clearly when he stopped for a street light.

The problem was that Izzy was second in command below Jack Entris. Izzy had lots of political power and friends that would fight for him. Only a few knew how dirty he was. We would have to do a bit more research to make sure the evidence was made available and be believable too.

Jack Entris was not available and we would have to read his mind before we went further. If he was bad, we would really have our work cut out for us.

We did not have to go to Montreal but it would be fun even if it was just as cold if not colder than Toronto. I was originally going to fly but all of the pack wanted to come and then so did all of the students. This was not just the ones here but those working for us. They numbered a hundred and forty six when you factored in the people needed to take care of them.

A call to Porter, our regional airline, got a price that made me think I was buying a plane or two. The fact that we would not be able to avoid the weapons check swung me over to train or bus.

Herb went so far to see if we could throw some extra cars on the train for our number. They didn't like that. They especially didn't like the idea that we were going to ask for a quantity discount.

Nicolas came to our rescue by mentioning that we were shareholders to the president of the railway. This was all it took to make some people step outside the box.

This was just the start of our ordeal. We had to have a place to stay. We had to have cash to pay for food and sundry expenses. A trip like this meant purchasing gifts and clothing. Christmas was only two months ago and there was lots of clothing given out then.

French was not too much of a problem because we had to learn the language in school. We pushed to learn it much better than the province demanded. The regular students were not as good or as motivated. They would now have a chance to try their skills. Many people in Montreal, and most that had to deal with tourists could speak other languages including English.

The next day we sought out Jack Entris and found him a gruff old man. At one time he had been a good cop but a bullet to his leg got him a desk job. From then on he moved up the ladder but had to switch to the bureaucracy to do it. He was appointed by the last Attorney General. He hated the bureaucracy he was in and it soured him. He did as good as he could though.

After some consultation with the pack I gave the man a call on his own special line. He was at home and I was nearby so I could read his mind.

"Hello, Entris here." The voice said he was not pleased to answer.

"Hi Jack. It's Zip. Perhaps you heard of me?"

"How'd you get this number. It's for official business."

"Well this is official business, Jack. I didn't call just to say hello though I wanted to do that too."

"Who are you. Nobody has the name Zip."

"I know who uses that as her code name. Now do you want to listen or ask questions that will not get answered?"

"What do you want?"

"Get your butt up and drive. I'll contact you by phone. You pick up a public phone and we talk where it's less likely we well be overheard."

"Why should I?"

"I said it was business, and I'm now talking big business."

"How do I know I won't be shot. You people are dangerous."

"You're a nasty old scoundrel but I wouldn't have you come to harm. If I wanted to hurt you, I could have done something when you drove back from Ottawa. You saw your son in Kingston and another in Ajax. You stayed overnight at the first location and had an Italian meal at a good restaurant."

"How do you know all this?"

"We have our own monitoring system. I mean you no harm and just want to pass on some information."

"We can talk now."

"Your house and phone could be bugged. You're a person that threatens some quite wealthy people. Don't you remember Kipling saying:

Five and twenty ponies,

Trotting through the dark—

Brandy for the Parson,

'Baccy for the Clerk;

Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,

Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!"

"As a matter of fact I do. Where do you want this talk to be held?"

"Go for a drive and I'll phone. You can pick the spot as long as it's not one of your usual haunts."

"Haunts?"

"I'm trying to use police jargon, Jack. Bear with me a bit."

Jack had no family living with him. A wife had left ten years ago and Jack was 64 now. He did have a son and a daughter as well as three great grandchildren.

Jack drove to a police feeding-station but left the donuts and grabbed a coffee when he went to the wall. Nicolas did his tricks and one of the two phones rang though they were not supposed to. As luck would have it, it was the phone closer to Jack.

"Yes."

"Hi Jack. Now let's get down to business if you want."

"Why don't you just come in? I won't arrest you."

"You are a sneaky old bastard but you're honest. I'll stay where I am. The first order of business is that we absolutely know that Izzy Carling is betraying you to Luigi Paonessa and his boss, Charles Lostraco. He even set up Tom Henderson to take the fall if somebody got close."

"I don't believe it. You have some agenda against both men."

"Well I put the bee in your bonnet and I said I can prove it. On another matter, Charles Lostraco has a shipment of cocaine coming in. It's only 1700 kilos but you might want to stop it."

"What!"

There were a lot of people startled by his outburst in the restaurant. I gave him the name of the ship and what the cargo was hidden in.

"When is this happening?"

"In four days on February 26th but the ship may not be prompt. They were thinking of possibly throwing their cargo overboard like last time but they almost lost it in a storm. That particular shipment went to the States. If we had known about it in time, we might have been able to do something about it."

"What the hell am I going to do with this information?" The question was rhetorical because somebody else took care of the east.

"There are some drugs in Montreal and you can go to talk to your counterpart, Marcel. While there, I'll phone you and tell you that I just found out that a large shipment is being landed. Nobody gets a chance to remove the cargo but you might not get Lostraco. I heard he waits to see if the cargo is being monitored before he takes it out of storage."

In a surprising change he said, "Who are you people. You're not listed anywhere."

"A secret is better kept that way. I work for the same government you do. To use an American term, we're a black-op. We have some fantastic equipment but it takes a young person to operate it. Something along the lines of a young boy learning motocross as opposed to a soldier learning it from scratch."

"I don't believe that." He was real testy.

"A particular study done by Kent State University in 2007 was done. It involved kindergarten to grade twelve learners. They did brain scans of how the brain interacted when using different skills, multitasking, and different approaches to learning. Basically what the study discloses is that the younger generation of children from ages 6 to 15 process information differently from older generations.

"In effect, this age of children have allowed the re-wiring of their brains to multitask more efficiently. They are capable of processing information faster and more accurately than their older siblings. They are also much faster in hand/eye coordination activities and theat assessment.

"What this means is that we, on the average, can do better simply because we have a good head start."

Jack dropped his objection and said, "How old are you?"

"That is not a polite question to ask a lady."

"You shot a man."

"You mean, a lady cannot shoot a bad man that threatens her country and her friends?"

"That was against the law. Your boss, who ever he is, faces some serious charges when we find out."

"He'd just say something crude to you in Newfounese. Oops, I shouldn't have said that."

"So he is a Newfoundlander. That narrows it down."

"He's the type that will rip you a new asshole. He doesn't like sissies."

"It's sissies that hold this country together."

He was getting too emotional. I said, "Jack, sip your coffee. Everybody is staring at you."

He looked around quickly but he was looking for me. "Where are you?"

"Close enough but still safe. You're a big bully and a girl like me would have problems kicking your shins to get away."

He liked this idea but didn't let on. "What do we do now? I can't go on just your word."

"Sure you can. You even have a mule that you can use to flush out James Watson or Luigi Paonessa. Paonessa's lawyers are working on getting the perp freed. You'll find the bodies of the other two mules north of Toronto. If Paonessa gets desperate, they may ask Carling to release him or get a tame judge."

"There are none."

"Then you better not see Wilcox. He's been in Paonessa's pocket since he went to university. You will find they were roommates. Paonessa's father even helped Wilcox with his tuition. There is a picture of all of them in the family album."

"Shit!"

"I'd say the exact same thing but I can't get away with it because of my lady status."

"Where are —"

"Jack! Think where you are. Don't yell out 'bodies'. It's not conducive to good digestion."

"Sorry."

"It's all right." I gave him the location of the farm and suggested that he bring a cadaver sniffing dog to find a few other ripe specimens.

I also said, "I don't want to tell you your business but you can get another judge to put a tap on Wilcox phone. Then go to Wilcox and seek a search warrant for the farm."

"I'll never get the first one."

"I can twist the Attorney General's arm. He will give it to you in a flash."

"You can do that?"

"I have to talk to him first. Maybe we can get it on the way back?"

"You're going?"

"I have to go to give the phone call. I can find some info to allow a small raid somewhere. This justifies your visit."

"If you have all this information, why don't you go through channels?"

"We are testing equipment that will get us chased by all the militaries of the world. We're just in the testing phase. We don't want even you to see us."

"What can you do?"

"I'm not at liberty to tell you just yet. What you know now about Lostraco is small time compared to our secret. We do a lot of good but it's small time. We need to branch out and grow. Our boss could just make a few calls to help us but then his name is linked to us. If I do the contacting then he's safe and so is our group. They like me to handle these matters and then monitor me. Just like on the job training."

"How do I get in contact with you?"

"If you work out, I'll get you an encrypted phone and the best bug detector there is. Up until then, I contact you."

"That's not good enough."

"It has to be. Send Pat Linsey to Montreal and he can contact you. We know him. He was asked to keep a secret but he told his superiors. I should be mad at him but I'm not. His usefulness as a baggage handler is over. All four subjects figure he's a plant. Ken Morgan is a poor cop that supplements his income the way Carling does but he has not found anything to sell yet."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I spoke in order of importance, Jack. Now I have to leave because I need to visit the little girl's room."

"There's one here you can use."

"And there's a dirty old man there too."

I could detect his mental smile when he said, "I won't peek."



-------

Chapter 5


The next day Melissa decided to give us Jordan. He came early in the morning. His father was the one who assisted in the delivery. Stan and Jessica were talking to him for the last few days and showing him the ropes. Though we were up late, we trouped down to the Union Station and boarded the train. The red carpet had been rolled out for us because of the president's orders. Getting two extra cars attached to the train was something odd.

We did not know for sure but it was logical that Pat would fly. To compensate us, we had our weapons. There was not much we could do on the train but study. The pack of course dispersed to investigate and so did the students. The instructors had to follow.

I sat back in the seat and said, "I feel like a mother taking her hundred and fifty children on a trip. I'm glad you're with me."

Melissa was sitting back in the seat feeding Jordan as his father looked on with a lot of pride.

Herb said, "I know how you feel but I don't quite feel like the father figure to all of them, just a few. Sometimes you remind me of Ellen or my mother. You know what to do and do it. You're the glue that holds us all together."

"Don't say that! Don't ever say that. I'm only one person and we have to carry on."

Herb was taken aback with my exclamation. "You have to face the facts Piper. You're necessary. The pack is just too young to function without your guidance."

"The pack will go on," I said firmly.

"Of course it will but you keep us focussed. We see your dream and follow it. You do what the pack wants but it's done your way."

"Don't let me fail, Herb. Too much rests on my shoulders."

"You know I will always be here."

I just hugged him and I could feel the strength of all the rest flow into me. Melissa was worried and we hugged her too.

It took a while to settle down and some of it was from the sheer number of people in Toronto. When we got out of the city I found that I could relax more. Megan loved the train and Tiffany had no worries because Megan had hundreds of parents to look after her.

The pack found people to heal and I only regulated it so we did not leave a trail an investigator could follow one day.

The students even found one of the clients that went to the restaurant Cathy Keep managed for us. This woman was one who frequented the back rooms. The girls liked her because she was always clean and gave as much as she received. Today she was with her brother who was 67 and two years older than his sister. The two siblings could just eat up the girls and the girls knew it. Since we were on holidays in a way and we did not want to bring problems on. No business or even fun could be had.

The instructors acted as chaperones and kept people away from the pack. Some of the pack went to the people though. There were other children on the train which pleased me. We did not get much chance to react with people other than students and employees.

A chef was ready to prepare the meals. Since he was different. He was put to work by all of us.

The trip was by express and only four hours long. The plane would be faster but then you had to factor in all the wait times at the airports. The train even took us downtown which made it just as quick if not quicker. Nicolas saw this and wondered if we should invest more in trains as long as there was enough advertisement about the service.

A Marriot Hotel was near the docks. We had reserved all the available rooms and there was spill over to other hotels. We had time for another meal and everybody ate because it was new.

The students had money because they were paid to do well in school. They were now marked on how they shopped by the instructors. The idea was to teach everybody to purchase sensibly. I had some trouble in this area myself.

Herb, Ellen and I went down to the port. There was a real cold wind coming down the Saint Lawrence River. A taxi took us all around the port while we tried to get a feeling for the area. The same taxi took us thirty minutes to the east and south.

Charles Lostraco lived in a mansion surrounded by three hectares of land. The house was all of cut stone and beautiful. The homes around it were almost as good. We just got a feeling for the neighbourhood then went back to the hotel.

The staff of the hotel were run ragged but they were polite and helpful. They just didn't usually have to deal with so many exuberant people. Before it got dark, Herb rented a passenger van to get around in. Later we drove back to Lostraco's neighbourhood. There was snow on the ground and there was almost a full moon. It would not get any darker unless the clouds came in. Our invisibility would probably be enough unless there were motion detectors.

It was really cold and windy so we put up our shields which helped a lot. We flew high then descended to be near the house. Lostraco was not home but we gathered some information from the family and servants. This was slow painstaking work but we stayed at it until Lostraco himself arrived.

The man was a good father, contributed to worthwhile charities but also robbed and killed people. I could not fault him much on owning some prostitutes but I at least educated them and they did not have to stay. Even though he was bad, he was not the worst. He had to constantly slap down people that wanted to topple him. Some died and some were treated with kid gloves. He didn't want a gang war because everybody lost then.

One of his old enemies was showing renewed vigour and was pressing Lostraco in drugs. Some of Lostraco's semi-legitimate businesses were hit hard. He thought spies were apparently everywhere because his deepest secrets were discovered and exploited. His trucks, carrying stolen goods were hijacked and he could do little about it other than post more security.

The idea struck me that Lostraco's shipment of cocaine was in more danger of being taken than just from the police. This would take some planning and perhaps we could take portions of two gangs instead of one.

Herb said, "That drug shipment is too valuable. Lostraco is going to have a lot more security guarding it. That old enemy is going to go after it. We better check him out too."

Ellen said, "I agree. Louis Tessier will try to hit Lostraco. If not to hurt the man but to destroy his business. Lostraco had to resort to borrowed money to get enough cash to pay for the shipment."

"That's true but Tessier has all but abandoned his home. He's thinking like a guerrilla fighter. Lostraco doesn't know what he is."

Herb said, "He has some ideas and I think we better find Tessier first. A three way battle for the coke is not something I want to see unless it's the crooks getting killed."

There was littler more we could learn from Lostraco in the time allowed so we went back to the hotel to get some sleep.

The next morning, the pack was out on the streets looking for anybody with information about Louis Tessier. This search included cops. Herb, Kim and I went to the docks to get another look. If a three way battle was going to develop then we would have to see the logical places where the three forces would place their troops.

Getting to the docks was difficult but we found some of the officials that controlled this area. These people had always been under pressure by smugglers to look the other way and some of the officials had succumbed. We took mental notes and looked for ways to back up our assertions if the men were turned in.

Tessier's name was well known too. He was seen as the up and coming power. He was an old man though and people wondered where he found the vigour to do what he was doing. The man's current whereabouts was not known by anybody we scanned. None knew of the shipment of drugs arriving but contraband came through all the time.

We took some time for sightseeing and usually kept up our scanning for information. Mindful of my promise to Jack Entris, we looked for drug dealers in the hopes of finding out who they bought their drugs from. We needed an excuse for Jack Entris to logically come here.

That night we had amassed quite a few names and these were put in a file. Nicolas found a WiFi away from the hotel and worked his way in. The names were in the police computers but the language used was French. We could speak the language and do an excellent job if we were near the person we were talking to. The written language was not as easy to parse. Some of the students were from Quebec and these were pulled in to help.

Jack was slated to come in the day before the freighter arrived. We had to scramble to get a worthwhile task for him.

I phoned Jack an hour after he was supposed to have arrived. "Hello Jack. How was your trip?"

His voice showed some relief to hearing me. "Not bad. Would you like to meet?"

"Not just yet. Is it convenient for you to find a public phone?"

"Give me two minutes. Are you going to follow me and then phone me? I still don't see how you can do what you did."

I had to laugh at this. When I recovered, I said, "I could pick the number of the phone if I was following you but I hope to have received a bit of trust. I'll give you my number and you can phone me. Cell calls can be traced as we all know. I would be disappointed if this happened."

"I'll be a good boy."

I gave him the number and I moved to be near a public phone of my own. When the call came in I gave Jack the public phone number.

He said, "Land lines are even easier to trace."

"But I won't be here long. I'm sorry Jack but you are going to have to take notes unless you record my voice. You do like carrying that little voice recorder."

"Do you know my favourite colour and dish?"

"Blue and stuffed green peppers."

"How do you know this?"

"We have the technology because we are a team testing it out. You're fairly important so we have to check you out a lot better then most. You have surveillance on many people so there is no reason for you to object. The only reason we are talking to you is because you passed."

"I ask again, how did you know this much detail?"

"Wouldn't it be a better question to ask how long you have been monitored and by how many people?"

"What you are doing is against the law."

"I'm quite aware of that. Just like the criminals, I can claim it's illegal only if I'm caught. You on the other hand only have to wrestle with your own conscience. An anonymous call gives you information that you either accept or not."

In a change of direction he said, "What information do you have for me?"

I gave Jack the locations of three cashes of drugs but we both knew the amount and placement changed all the time. The suppliers that had the drugs were wealthy and had links to the courts. Some of those men had paid informers in high places and these names were listed.

More data had to be given that should give the courts enough information for a reasonable assumption that drugs were to be found. This was actually the hardest pieces of data to gather. It was one thing to read a mind but another to prove that the information could have been found other ways.

One of the names of informers was a provincial court judge. Jack didn't even ask how I knew. Since Jack knew some federal judges, then the search warrants would be easier to come by.

With this done, I said, "Lostraco is being pushed hard by Louis Tessier. Already many illicit cargos have been hijacked. I expect that we might have a three way fight for the drugs."

"How do you know this? Why didn't you tell me this first?"

"Jack, settle down. You're going to have a coronary. You learned everything in order."

"We have to get more people and that is going to warn the opposition. I don't have enough time to get all the men necessary. You should have told me sooner."

"If there is a hijack attempt, it may be after Lostraco decides to take the drugs from the warehouse. In that case, you have three or four more days."

"They may try to take it as it comes off the boat."

"Not likely but possible. Talk to the Department of Defence if you want. They may like to have a piece of this action."

"You're telling me how to run my business!"

"Do it your way. I can try to get the Girl Scouts to provide surveillance if you want."

In another change of direction he said, "Are you part of that organisation?"

"I actually have a pack but that is more related to cubs."

It was now up to Jack to see what he could accomplish. Dealing with Marcel, his counterpart here in Quebec was not an easy chore either. Doing all this on short notice would make the job even more difficult.

We continued to search for Tessier's whereabouts but the Greek Warrior came in first. The ship was a container vessel. This could take weeks to unload since a single crane could only remove 20 to 30 containers an hour. This particular ship had almost 8000, 40 foot containers. Two cranes can work on a ship to cut the time in half and some cranes can lift two smaller containers at once. It all depended on what port facilities were available.

The Greek Warrior had to wait a day for a ship to clear. We monitored the ship but I was positive that we were not the only ones doing so. Joy and Bobby flew to the ship during the night and found that the drugs would come off with the crane as opposed to going in the river to be picked up by smaller ships.

Jack called me back and we went to public telephones again. "I'm having trouble getting the warrants. Do you have anything extra to add?"

"Nothing as evidence but I know the combinations to the safes but that may not look good at the trials."

"How the hell did you get those?"

"You don't need to know yet. How about I give you the numbers to their off shore accounts? I could have robbed them for a total of 27 million but I was a good girl."

"$27,000,000? How could you pass on that?"

"Scout Law says I have to be trustworthy."

"I wish you hadn't told me that but I need something concrete. I'm in a catch-22 situation."

"The last time we called the police and then had a small gun battle to get them involved. We can use blanks. You can seal the area and there should be enough evidence around to warrant a warrant."

"I don't like guns and that's poor practice. Innocents get hurt."

"Documents take time to acquire and you need just enough clout to take on the Greek Warrior and Lostraco."

Jack said, "I may have to go with a favour instead of enough evidence."

"Your partner here in Quebec can gather the kudos and you come across as a friend sharing information. Tell me where and when you are going and we can feed you information. If you want, I can give it to Pat Linsey. You can build on each success."

"Not all searches lead to charges being laid."

"These ones will."

"I'm putting my career on the line here not you. Why don't we talk face to face?"

Let's finish with Lostraco and the Greek Warrior first. You can go by past performances. There's not much I can talk about in any case. I have to keep some of my secrets."

"Ok, after the drugs are seized then."

"Hopefully with Lostraco and possibly Tessier charged."

"Agreed."

When I got off the phone, Herb said, "Are you going to meet the man? He's not one of us."



"I think he would be sympathetic."

"Can we risk the pack's safety on what you think?"

"We can play it by ear. We let him see some of our technology and slowly clue him in if he looks good."

"I hope you're right."

"I hope I'm right too."



Jack told me that Paul Beaudouin was the first dealer on the list. Jack was even kind enough to give us the time. This was going to be at nine in the morning because the man would be at his office.

We were at the office before the secretaries arrived because we went through the windows that were not usually opened. Since it was on the ninth floor, Beaudouin thought them safe.

We could get at the motion detectors because we could hug the walls and ceiling. There were two safes but one was quite well hidden. Kim opened one and Joy another. They just had to look through the metal to see when the parts lined up the way they should.

When the books came out, we photographed them all, then they went back the way we found them. A note talking about the Greek Warrior was added but there were no signatures. It was also vague and may give Jack some added reasons for monitoring the vessel's cargo after it was unloaded. Later we monitored those arriving for work and I gave some information to Jack by phone.

The raid was exciting. Security downstairs tried to warn those upstairs of what was happening but the button and then the phone didn't work. A man running to the elevators tripped and fell. The elevator was already going up anyway.

We learned that the cops in Quebec were just as pushy as they were other places. We had to hurry though because another raid was happening at nearly the same time at Beaudouin's restaurant.

We did not see Jack and more importantly, he did not see us. The raids went off well because of a snip or two here and there as well as a well placed foot and once, some fishing line.

The Sûreté du Québec was invited to the festivities while the RCMP claimed jurisdiction because of the smuggling, income tax evasion and tampering with federal employees.

The men knew about Louis Tessier but still did not know where he might be. We made lists of the pseudonyms used to represent some of the mid-level pushers listed in the various account books.

The fallout about the raids had not settled when the container we were after was lowered onto a truck and taken to a fenced compound and then into a warehouse to prevent freezing. Only a few people present knew of the contents and only one of them was nearby. We stayed away and just watched from a distance. If bullets started to fly, I'd rather we were not in the way.

The cargo was checked by customs officers and cleared. One of the officials was dirty but still did not know of the actual cargo. Men finally came for the containers and the two clean containers were taken. We had found some watchers but they all reported to Lostraco.

Jack received an encrypted phone from us and we used this to communicate. So far it looked like nobody was trying to trace the call to us. We were near enough to Jack to know that he would not do this yet but his counterpart here in Quebec would.

With the phone was a good laptop. What was special about it was the software that tied in with the onboard GPS. The machine was tied to the cell phone system so we could send information to it that would be displayed on a map. The map would show all the players we would find when the operation began.

Montreal was an interesting city but our twenty four hour watches on the cargo began to tell. It was actually ten days after the drugs landed that a truck came to remove the last container.

There were a lot of excited people now. They monitored the container from as far away as possible. Five other vehicles escorted the truck at a distance. We followed in our own vehicles and stayed further away.

Because of the threat of hijacking and the chance to catch another gang, the police stayed further back. Jack had no problem selling this idea because of all the times Lostraco's loads were hit.

The pack drove through this and tabulated who the players were. The police were keeping their distance though most wanted to burst in and seize the cargo. There were five of Lostraco's vehicles with three men each. Tessier had thirty one men and they were even more heavily armed. They also had a wide assortment of nonlethal weapons because the underworld did not want the robbery to become public knowledge. This would bring down even more investigators to take the drug lords down.

The law was well represented. Grim men rode in cargo vans and numbered eighty two. Two helicopters and a plane were in the air and a further force of twenty officers were held in reserve. They rode a school bus to remain anonymous.

Missy phoned me and said, "Cap, there's another car. It's shadowing the truck. There's something odd here."

"What did you find?"

"I thought it was one of us in the car but it isn't. Somebody is concentrating on the minds of the driver and the escorts."

"Shit, pull back. Act like we did before. Minimum broadcasting."

"Got it."

Nicolas was in charge of communications. He phoned the rest with a text message giving the new orders. My mind went into overdrive. This information frightened me.

"Herb, Ellen! Somebody else may have been reading Lostraco's mind. That is why he was doing so badly."

Ellen said, "It could be a police force with lots of people and money to take Lostraco down."

"It could be but I don't think so. Tessier is the one showing the most gains. If he can read minds or has somebody that can do it for him then that would explain why he's doing so well. Tessier is expanding the most in drugs and the shipment is Lostraco's hope of beating Tessier."

Herb said, "This may not be important in the overall scheme of things but none of the literature hints of real espers before. Were they a natural phenomenon or something produced through some abnormal action on the brain?"

"Whatever it is, we have to consider this a acute threat, the same kind as Knox was to us but perhaps worse. We only scouted a very small portion of Toronto. Espers could crop up anywhere."

Ellen, Herb, Nicolas and I were coordinating this and we also formed the reserve force. I knew that if an esper guided force attacked the shipment then there was a good chance they would take the container. Our own ability to defeat Knox and Carstairs attested to this fact.

"Let's get going. If the shipment is going to be attacked, I want to be there."

Herb said, "What about the shooting?"

"A rogue esper is far more dangerous to the world. We have to strike now."

The truck was heading east on highway 20 toward Drummondville. We had to hurry to catch up. It was good that Quebec drivers usually drove as fast as we were.

Missy was still in the mind of the truck driver and she phoned to tell us that the driver was going to pull off where the cargo could be quickly shifted to another vehicles. She did not attempt to look into the other esper's mind for fear of warning him. We knew from the flavour that this one was a male.

The truck drove through Drummondville. On the other side, the driver was given last minute telephone instructions by one of Lostraco's lieutenants to pull off. They were going to a small warehouse to transfer the goods to seven smaller vehicles.

I phoned Jack and said, "They are going to break up the load in an empty warehouse on Rue Cockburn near Rue Dorian. Apparently the shipment is on seven pallets." The computer he now used zeroed into the location. "I have to tell you now that we have a joker. One of the hijacker's cars is loaded with sophisticated equipment. If you jump in too soon the hijackers will leave." This car was now circled when the map zoomed out. I wished that we could use the spy satellites but to do so would alert the American government. The closest Canada got to this type of surveillance was a plane with a camera.

"How do you know this and how do you know where all of the forces are? Marcel does not even know this much detail and he is running the show. You even have the officer's names and numbers. We want to know how you did this."

"Our equipment is even better. We are curious as to those we are working with. They could put us in danger."

"Nobody could do what you are doing."

I laughed at this assertion. "Break up what's being done into small units. Each task is possible though some appear difficult. We have access to the records at a higher level than you have."

Jack almost shouted, "That doesn't explain how you got the names of the gang members. Some of the information is either wrong or not in the database."

I said, "Our information is correct. We want you to know enough about the opposition so you have a better chance to survive. Now tell me what you and Marcel are going to do so we can coordinate?"

Marcel got on the phone but did not go into any fruitless preamble. He said, "We will surround the warehouse district. We'll stay away from your circled vehicle as best we can. Where are you?"

Instead of answering his question, I said, "We will take each of the four directions as well as cover Rue Lindsay. I want that car."

"We can help."

The rogue esper was a complete unknown and I wanted to cover all of my bases. "We may need it."

Herb, Ellen and I were ten minutes away at this time and I was afraid of being late.

It was six minutes after two in the afternoon when we left the Trans-Canada Highway and headed into Drummondville. There was not much traffic on Lindsay and we got to Cockburn.

Our own forces of twelve cars were spread out to cover the entire area. We were going to rely on mental communications but with the esper we had to use the cell phones.

We were not going to underestimate the esper. Eventually he was going to find he was in a trap and leave. What I was worrying about was that he would use the hijackers as a force to break out. This would mean a lot of danger to the civilians.

I found Jack with my mind and focussed on what he was told. The truck containing the container had pulled into the dock a minute ago but only two of Lostraco's cars accompanied it. The other three formed a roving patrol.

Tessier's forces seemed to know almost as much as us and rushed in from adjacent properties. It was only when I felt the thoughts of people dying that I knew that the hijacking was on.

Jack had a hard time getting Marcel to hold back until Tessier's men were committed but he managed it. Two whole minutes later, the law rushed forward to seal off the site.

With the esper warned of the trap, Brandon tried to subtly read the esper's mind. The information he sent us was distorted because the mind of Gaston Fournier was hallucinating. I interfaced with Brandon and just the two of us monitored the young man.

Herb said, "That guy's an addict. We could have moved in and he would never have seen us."

I was looking over the evidence too when all of a sudden Fournier had a bout of clarity and began to give orders. While I searched through the muck, Ellen sent out my orders. Fournier was treated like a live grenade. I could not dig deep because I had never got close to him to form a link. From what I saw in his mind, I didn't want to.

I was able to find that he worked for Tessier and at one time had been a guest of Knox, courtesy of Lostraco. He had been one of the few to survive the drug treatment unchanged. After four doses of Abicore he had no psychic reactions. After two more months, he was released with five thousand dollars for his trouble.

He was lucky because Knox released thirteen people then later sent people to hunt them down and kill them. Later subjects that had no apparent reaction to Abicore were similarly disposed of.

What really worried me was that there may be others out there with abilities similar to ours. I could live with this except that those people would draw attention to us. Once the government or even a large company learned of us, we would be toast. We would be hunted down and then studied. Being a lab rat was the best we could hope for and it was more than what the pack would accept. We would die first.

Fournier ordered his car to accelerate. He guided it to a gate blocked by an RCMP cruiser. I felt him start to form a compulsion that would make the police not see him but it was different. This was much stronger than I had seen before. He commanded the three police officers to die.

The police fell almost immediately and I sent orders to Ellen, "Send William, Dina and Tatum to see what they can do. Herb, slow down and turn around. Fournier is coming our way." The police may well die but perhaps a counter compulsion would save them.

I had to pull back from the conflict to concentrate on Fournier. I could not let him get away.

Herb turned around and we raced back toward the Trans-Canada but we were still overtaken by the car with Fournier in it. We raced but still had to hang back. Two police cars raced by us in pursuit of Fournier.

"Herb, faster." He didn't answer but the car accelerated. In less than a minute we found the first police car ploughed into a line of parked cars. Herb slammed on the brakes and we investigated. The cops were almost dead and I saw that their bodies were mangled. There was nothing we could do.

We got back in the car and raced forward only to find the second police car against the back of a truck. The driver was alive but just. We stopped again.

I touched the driver and commanded, "Live! Live!" When his mind accepted the orders, I sent some healing to him but we could not stay long.

More sirens were coming our way. Herb said, "We have to go."

I looked at Ellen and said, "Stay here and see what you can do. You can catch up later."

"Ok, Piper. Be careful."

We raced off. Fournier was far ahead of us and gaining distance. He hit the Trans-Canada and went west toward Montreal.

I called Jack and immediately said, "Fugitives heading for the Trans-Canada on Boulevard des Pins. Two officers killed near Rue des Marguerites. One officer dead at Rue de Boucherville and one receiving aid."

"What!! How could this happen?"

I had to think fast. "High tech weapons. Stay back, we are going after them. If you let Marcel loose focus then more will die."

"You're only a kid!"

"We are the best you've got. Let us handle it."

Jack argued but could do nothing except get more men killed but the same fate awaited us.

We raced forward to the ramps and then went west. I was scanning ahead trying to keep Fournier's location in my mind. I was too far away to read much but he was calming down. I was afraid of him detecting us so we stayed back nearly fifteen kilometres back.

Ellen phoned Herb and said, "The officer looks like he's going to make it. I had to get out of the way when two other cars came."

I relaxed just a bit and so did Herb. He said, "Thanks Ellen. You going to follow?"

"As soon as I can. Kim is going to pick me up."

We were heading for St. Hyacinthe. Ahead of us, I felt Fournier filling with terror again but in less than a minute it began to fade. I didn't know what it was. Seven minutes later we knew. The road was blocked. When we got by, we saw a Quebec Provincial Police car in a ditch. If Fournier commanded them to die then we were far too late to do anything.

Fournier's car was even further ahead now and I was worried that I would break the connection to him. Herb tried to cut the distance. If Fournier made it to Montreal, I would lose him in the millions of people.

Fournier's car slowed down even more near Montreal. Fournier's mind was still sending out hallucinations but I didn't dare dig even now. In moments of clarity I knew that Tessier roughly knew what had happened and was very angry.

We managed to get within six kilometres only because I got a glimpse of where they were heading. They were going slower now and Fournier was trying to formulate excuses for the failed hijacking.

Kim and Ellen caught up as did Brandon and Tatum. The rest were monitoring the fiasco in Drummondville. My worry here was almost as acute. If Tessier's men talked to the police about Fournier's abilities then the rabbit would be out of the hat. We would then have to make a lot more provisions for hiding because the search for us would be major.

This secret would not be held long. Spies would spread it to other nations and to other agencies. In that eventuality then we would be hunted by every government and perhaps every organisation wishing to cash in on the discovery of the millennia.

Fournier's car left the main streets and headed west on Rue Pierre Tetreault. This was near Thomas Chapais Park. The garage door must have been open because it got dark quickly with no chance to pause in the driveway.

I moved further into Fournier's mind. He was on the ragged edge. He was petrified and he absolutely knew that his bodyguards were going to kill him if he slipped even a little. In a moment of clarity I saw that the killing of the police was a new ability. He had not known if his commands would kill or just rendered them unconscious.

The bodyguards had been in contact with Tessier and the man was in a rage. The killing of so many police would be a major news story that would get the citizens to back the call for more police powers and focus the police on the Montreal drug trade.

Fournier was hustled into the home by bodyguards that were now guards because they had their weapons in their hands.

We were at least three minutes behind. With Fournier's preoccupation with his own safety, I took some chances and dug deeper into the man. I saw his transfer into Sheila Knox' tender mercies. He was one of the few that were allowed to leave before she started to kill all the test subjects that did not show promise.

Fournier was not an easy prey to catch when Knox decided to clean up some of her mistakes. By then he had a rudimentary ability to read minds. He had no access to Abicore but he did to amphetamines. He was bright enough to link his abilities to this drug. I didn't know how the stimulant functioned to give him what Abicore had given us.

Tessier took Fournier in and used him as the young man's powers grew. It started with finding informers and even police and then progressed to gambling in high stakes poker.

Tessier kept Fournier under control by regulating his amphetamine intake. He also supplied a home in a gated community. The house he was now in was just a safe house where Tessier could talk and even kill if the need arose.

Tessier's hand flashed out and caught Fournier's face. The young man staggered back. Guns were aimed at him and he knew better than to respond. His boss moved in again like the street fighter he was and kicked Fournier seven times before he screamed, "How could you do this? Everything was working so beautifully. We were going to be the strongest in North America. Everything would be ours. You had to kill cops. Why did you do it? Why didn't you do those other tricks?" When Fournier did not answer he got three more kicks and Fournier fell into unconsciousness

We made it to the neighbourhood and had to slow down or be noticed. The park was only a block away and we headed there and stopped. There were no homes on our side of the road so we knew we could stop without too much notice.

I took the opportunity to dig deeper into Fournier's mind. His delusions were much stronger now and it was difficult to find what was real and what was not. I did not dig into his youth but I found that he was like many hormone charged males.

He lived in one of his fantasies. Tessier gave him women as payment for working for him but Fournier found his own too. He would find a women that would catch is eye and compel her to drop whatever she was doing and follow him. He cut a wide swath through the females he ran across. He had sex at any opportunity and shared his catches with his bodyguards.

Marriages were ruined and the parents of young girls were devastated. The girls themselves did not feel raped but the ones that pursued Fournier felt this. This sort of activity brought attention to Fournier and Tessier put his foot down. There were now four women in the semipermanent harem.

I was shocked to see that one other had fled Knox' grasp after she was forced to take part in the Abicore tests. Margot Dumont was one of those sought by Knox and a reward had been posted by Knox. I had only changed this so that the person had to be brought in unharmed. So far none had turned up.

Fournier's memories told me that Tessier had found the girl and had seen her worth after meeting Fournier. It was hoped that Fournier would train the girl to help her develop her powers. He was not eager to do this because his own uniqueness would drop. At the moment, she was just a semen receptacle while Fournier pretended to train her. The girl along with her three normal concubines were housed in Fournier's home.

Water was thrown onto Fournier's face and he slowly emerged from his delusions. I was fairly deep now and just held my place and hoped he would not know that I was here.

Tessier's face was red. He too was on the ragged edge. This was the first time I actually saw him. Herb tried his best to interface with the man and learn his secrets. I was too busy trying to not come to anybody's notice.

Tessier yelled, "Why did you do it? Tell me or I will kick you until you do."

"I didn't try to kill them. I just wanted them to go to sleep."

"Sleep! Sleep forever. Do you know what this will do to my plans? I am going to be dragged to the police station and questioned for days. Everything I am trying to do will be scrutinised. I am going to lose millions and millions just because of you."

"I just fought to get free. I would not be able to help you if I was behind bars."

"You would be released eventually. You would never make it to prison. My lawyers would see to it. I hate people like you that let drugs rule your lives."

"I need some now. You promised. I can't even think straight. I need something to calm me. Just a little, please."

"You disgust me. You were going to get what you wanted after you did what you were supposed to do. Now my people are dead or taken by the police. My plans are destroyed by your incompetence."

I did not see how this was the case. Fournier was not even in charge of the operation. He was there to inform one of Tessier's trusted lieutenants about what he needed to know. That same trusted lieutenant was now dead.

Fournier was going to get kicked again when one of the men started to try to talk reason to Tessier. The man snarled but stopped his punishment as he yelled and screamed at the young man. I almost felt sorry for Fournier but not much.

The guards gave a much better report about what little they knew. They tried their best to show that Fournier had failed to find the presence of the police but was encumbered by the withdrawal of the drug. The same drug that was needed to perform his specialised duties.

Tessier left the house twenty minutes later but not before he backhanded Fournier one more time. Herb had a lot of information but not nearly enough to get everything.

Fournier was hustled into another car and taken to the gated community north west of Montreal. We followed close as I tried to absorb everything I could that would be useful in Fournier's mind.

The trip this time took nearly an hour. The roads were slippery in places and nobody wanted to get pulled over for speeding. Kim, Ellen, Brandon and Tatum were hurrying ahead to see what they could do to get in place before the rest of Herb and I arrived.

Ellen was taking the phone calls from the pack and even two from Jack. The latter wanted a meeting now and I was not prepared to do this especially when he had the taste of blood in his mouth.

The cops that were first attacked by Fournier had survived because of our help. The one Ellen treated had died but it was because of the accident not Fournier's direct mental efforts.

William and Dina reported that there was only one person that knew about Fournier's abilities and he was in critical condition. He was also the type of person that would tell the police if it meant he would get off. Tessier was the type of man that would make sure this never happened.

Eric and Joy had shifted to help Bobby monitor Lostraco. The man had just lost a fortune in drugs. He also saw that Louis Tessier was going to catch a lot of flack that neither of them wanted.

I almost pulled all the way out of Fournier's mind and said to Herb, "This guy developed on his own. His shield is stronger than ours. He has not found the need to push out his thoughts as if they are speech but can do the much more intricate job of forming a compulsion. He missed out on the compulsion that he is not there but he can form an image so he is thought of as somebody else. This is his strongest trait and a lot stronger than ours. He cannot pick himself up but can pick small articles up."



"So what are you saying?"

"He's a creep that's dangerous to us but we can learn something from him. He's on the road to self destruction and he's going to take a few people with him. We're going to have to do something with him or everybody will find out about his powers — "

"And people will start to realise that we do the same thing."

"You got it."



Herb then said, "Tessier had strong feelings about killing Fournier for a while. Fournier must have known this. This kind of stress is no good for anybody especially those on drugs like amphetamines."

"He did know but he was not sure if it was a hallucination or not."

We followed the car at a discrete distance. Fournier was hyper at the moment and seeing threats everywhere. Part of this was because his own guards were worried that they may be next on his hit list. They were very frightened of his powers after what happened in Drummondville. Fournier controlled them somehow but had to give them enough leash to act normal.

Our driver let us off just outside the wall of the gated community. Three other vehicles were here ahead of us to drop off our own people. There was no need to meet and discuss our plans because we had been talking mentally for the last fifteen minutes.

When it looked good, we sent out our own compulsion for people to not see us but we also had to worry about cameras on the perimeter and along all the roads. Rather than go fly high, we stayed low and tried to avoid eyes and cameras just in case.

Fournier was given his fix and he relaxed for the first time but his hallucinations did not stop. He was even more violent now and his guards kept their hands on their guns. I knew well the symptoms some habitual amphetamine users had. I knew in this case that it would be best to simply put him out of his misery.

His home was not the largest but it was the one that was the most garish. This had to do with his age, his drives and mostly his drug habit.

There were three male guards with Fournier along with an older cook. In the basement was a woman of twenty seven taking the role of a dominatrix. She had one pregnant woman chained to the wall and whipping her. Around her were three other young women or children in harem outfits. It did not take me long to find that the woman with the whip was sicker than most people we ran across. Her job was the guard that was to take care of the younger girls.

It was shocking when I read the minds of the girls. They were utterly complacent in their roles of slaves. They did not enjoy the pain. They took it stoically as if it was a bath they had to take a few times a week. They were this way because of Fournier's constant compulsions for them to be subservient. The pregnant woman was the oldest. Her name was Margot Dumont and the other one of Knox' graduates.

Ellen, Brandon and Tatum checked all the windows and doors looking for a way in while Kim, Herb and I watched and waited. There were cameras all over but only a few could view the house.

When no entrance presented itself, Ellen used the diamond of her wedding ring and cut a ring about thirty centimetres in diameter. She tapped the scribbled line a dozen times with the butt of her gun and the disk of glass fell into the house to break on the floor. Her hand was inside even before the glass hit to release the lock.

It was doubtful if an alarm would be triggered at this time of day, even if it was starting to get dark. The window slid up. No audible alarm was given and nobody in the house took too much notice of the noise.

The three raced in and closed the window and blinds immediately. Another window on the same floor opened and Kim, Herb and I flew in. Each of us had silenced pistols. We were going to shoot anybody shooting at us. The objective was to capture Fournier and now Margot Dumont. If possible, we were going to try to remove any memory of Fournier's abilities. During this time we had to hide our own. To do this we put on our masks that covered our heads. If we did this right, we should have no problems.

My mind was still linked to Fournier's but it was one of his guards that decided at the last second to go to the bathroom before going to the kitchen. The man looked up the stairs as Herb came down. He was only millimetres off of the treads to negate the sound of the movement of the wood.

The man was quick and screamed, "Attack," as he drew his gun from his shoulder harness. Herb had no choice but to shoot him first but so did Kim and I. Herb flew down the steps as he looked through the walls.

Herb just dove over the rail so he would not have to be exposed at the bottom and we did the same thing too. One man had his pistol in two hands near his face and near the doorway. He just counted, "Three," mentally when I shot him through the door frame. His body had just started to move when the bullet entered his skull.

I made it to the main floor when all of a sudden I felt as if my brain was being squeezed. Fournier was brutally searching for information and I clamped my shield down as tight as I could. At the same time I yelled out "Block."

Fournier hammered at my mind for a few seconds as I tried to get control of myself. He was savage in his work. He had no finesse at all. When I saw Kim falling under the same attack, I tried to locate Fournier but I couldn't. My mind was still reeling from the attack. I did not have to read her mind to know she was in great pain.

I picked his last known position and shot through the wall hoping to at least distract him. Three shots left my gun then I felt that this was all useless. I had no right to be here and harming people. I was acting far too much like Knox. Shame welled up and I felt like heaving my last meal. How could I be doing this.

More shots were heard then I felt that life was just too much to bear. Running the pack was just too much for me. I cried for Kim, Herb and my baby Stan because I just didn't want to carry on any longer. Somehow my heart had stopped and this was how it should end. It would at least be relatively painless though I deserved all the pain I could get for what I had done. I closed my eyes as the pain came and I screamed and then nothing.



-------

Chapter 6


Pain was everywhere when I woke up. Somebody was holding me and causing more pain. I tried to curl up to at least avoid some of it but it didn't work.

"Piper, snap out of it. We need you. Forget the pain. It's in your own mind." More pain came to my face as my head was violently moved to one side. Three more surges made my head ring even more and I tried to crawl away from it.

A sudden shock came to my face but it was cold water. It went up my nose and in my mouth. I began to sputter and moved again to get away. Another slap came and my anger came through. Whey won't they let me die?

Suddenly an image was pushed into my mind. I saw Fournier taking over our property in Toronto and killing the babies and raping the youngest members of our group. I had to stop him. He ripped Jessica's small head off and was only a step away from Stan.

I shot up from the floor to kill but Fournier was not there and neither was my pain. "What happened?"

Everybody was here and alive. I felt so thankful. Herb said, "Fournier attacked us much harder than we expected. All of us went down. My natural block went up but this time it was much stronger. I felt pain like never before but my block seemed to shed it as if it were water and I had a wetsuit. Fournier was compelling us to die until I put a bullet into him then three more."



"Is he dead?"

"Probably. His bodyguard carried him away but I had to work on all of you. You were the hardest hit but everybody was going to die. I helped Ellen first because she had experience in this. It was good that I did because it was very hard. I performed artificial respiration and heart message to keep you alive. I think Fournier found the link to him and followed it back to you."

"Let's go find him. I want to see the body with my own eyes."

"Can't, the police are coming. Fournier commanded everybody in the house to die except his bodyguard. I was able to save Dumont and one girl. The rest are dead."



I wanted Fournier dead. He was just too strong of an enemy to leave behind. "Brandon, Tatum! Go look for Fournier. Herb, Ellen, fly the girls out."

They just looked at me for a moment then they started to move. I found that I would have difficulty flying myself out of the house never mind carrying a passenger.

Kim went for the two survivors. We were all in their minds as they came. One of the many reasons I was angry at Fournier, was for what he had done to the girls and to a lesser extent his own guards.

The younger one simply did not have a personality. It was gone. She followed orders but would not go to the bathroom unless told to do so. This made me physically sick at what had happened.

Margot Dumont was slightly better. She was older and had a stronger ego. She was also beaten and drugged less, simply because Fournier was supposed to be training her.

Herb, Ellen and Kim had to fly Dumont out. I used my mind to try to find Fournier but he was gone. There was a good chance that he was dead and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I staggered through the house until I came to the small safe. I knew the combination from Fournier's memories. It had amphetamines and some other drugs. It also had some papers relating to Fournier. I took these and thought of scattering the drugs over the floor until I remembered they could be snorted to get high.

Fournier had sat in a drugged stupor in a nearby room while reading the minds of people Louis Tessier wanted the truth about. Tessier wore a device so he could hear Fournier's reports. There was too much to handle at one time so audio recordings were also made. The cassettes were stored here.

The police were a distance off but security for the community was not. I shot at them so they kept their distance as I drew attention to all the hiding spots Fournier had in the house.

I found the girl sitting as if a living doll in a corner, the exact way she had been placed when they came up the steps. Fournier liked them pretty and this one was.

The dungeon in the basement was more theatrical than anything but it was used on the girls. Also in the basement was a hidden hatch that led to the storm sewer. Tessier had put this in so he could escape if necessary. Kim and I opened the hatch so it would look like a plausible way for us to escape.

I finally found what I was after and took the photos and movies of the slaves. I didn't want a picture left of Dumont. There may be many of them but I had to try to keep her a secret from the police at least.

The group came back and both Herb and Ellen took the girl out. I found Fournier's laptop and then the desk computer. The hard drive came out of this. Kim helped me gather everything and we fired more bullets until the police arrived. Their front tires were shot and then we left. I was glad Kim was with me because it was difficult to make the trip even with the small burden we had.

Laverne Gagne was the name of the thirteen-year-old girl we rescued. She and Margot Dumont were hustled into our rooms at the hotel. Their minds were interrogated while they stared at us uncomprehendingly. Laverne had been simply kidnapped and told she was a happy slave of Fournier. She believed it implicitly after it had been pounded into her brain.

We started our own form of reprogramming. Both of them were used to doing everything told of her which helped somewhat at the start. We did another form of help by destroying the growth in her womb. She did not even think she was pregnant because she was not told to use her mind on a subject like this.

Laverne and Margot had been given amphetamines as had the other slaves. Fournier did not know about the Abicore but knew that the amphetamines gave him his mental powers. All the girls got the drugs to see if their powers emerged. Margot's did but she was kept tightly under control.

The pack at one time took Abicore and an amphetamine substitute to keep their powers. The last version of Abicore was heavily modified by the accidental addition of ether. This version actually was reproduced by our own bodies. Fournier had one of the earliest versions in him. As hard as it was to believe, I had to think that this version of Abicore was produced in his own body. His own heavy ingestion of amphetamines simply carried the small amount produced through the barrier and into his brain.

The heavy use of amphetamines on the slaves, further suppressed their egos to where they were gone or nearly so. This drug use also caused problems with the developing fetus in each girl. They were deformed and it was much better for both girls, if the fetuses were aborted as soon as possible.

The television news came on showing the dead in Fournier's home. All the information lead back to the occupant and not the real owner.

Jack called many times but I did not answer until the next day.

He brusquely said, "We need a meeting."

"The phone will have to do for a while, Jack. We are still busy."

"What did you do at that house?"

There was no sense denying this. What we did was very illegal and Jack's job was to make sure people followed the law. I said, "This was Fournier's home. He was armed with a weapon the police could not deal with. You saw what it did to the police that chased him and to the people in the house. Our own team was overcome and would have died there too if it were not for one of our group."

"What was that weapon? Why did many people in the neighbourhood experience extreme pain?"

"Those are highly restricted topics. You are far down the line and I am telling you only because you need an explanation if you are going to work with us."

"Partners talk things out and meet."

"We are not quite partners, Jack. We dig and find the secrets and you are the person that coordinates the gathering of evidence and the apprehension of the criminals. My group has to remain anonymous at all times."

"What about Laverne Gagne and the other female?"

It was logical that fingerprints had been found in the house. Laverne had been kidnapped so those prints would be picked up at the girl's home. "Both girls were forced to take drugs. Fournier saw nothing wrong with this. He had an almost inexhaustible supply provided by Tessier. They are both heavy addicts at the moment."

"I want them back so they can be treated."

"Normally I would agree with you but we have two serious problems. Fournier wanted slaves not humans. Part of it was being a male with a high testosterone level but most was his defective personality. Think of the greatest atrocities done to people and you will get a small understanding of what the girls went through. Laverne simply has no personality. It is either destroyed or in hiding. Our own people have access to techniques and drugs that the world has not seen. They are a very deep secret. If you get her now, you will get a robot until the girl dies. You simply do not have the facilities to handle this. We have a much better chance."

"Her parents want her back. What you are doing is illegal and immoral."

"We do not always get what we want. Tell me Jack, is it more immoral to let Laverne rot in an institution all her life or give her a chance to regain a semblance of her old personality?"

"That is not the question, Laverne belongs with her parents."

I wanted Jack on my side so we could make the world a better place. I figured he would understand if he knew how the girl really was. "You do not understand the severity of her problem yet. I do not want a meeting but we can have a video conference."

"That's not good enough."

"It is going to have to be. Since you are not a psychiatrist, find one and clue him in as to what happened. Pick one that will keep his mouth closed about us. He can have some time to assess the girl. You cannot do your duty and seize her so your conscience will be clear. You will learn that what I said was true."

Jack was not a happy camper. He threatened and quoted laws. I showed him a rational approach that a judge may have thought about but would never rule on. In the end I broke the connection.

That afternoon the real ownership of the Fournier house was traced back to Tessier with our help. Two dead girls that were presumed kidnapped would dog Tessier's chance for freedom. He decided to stay hid for a while yet.

We went after Tessier directly because we knew where he would be. Fournier was still alive but dying of his wounds. When we found Tessier, he was busy putting contracts out on people that knew about Fournier and his powers. The esper himself was just too valuable to kill no matter how unstable the man was.

When we got enough info, I phoned Lostraco.

"Who's this?"

"You don't need to know but I know where Louis Tessier is right now."

"Why do you think I want to know?"

"Cut the bullshit." I told him where Tessier was and even gave the number of armed men in the house.

"Why did you tell me this?"

"I hate Tessier for what he has done or allowed to happen. I'd like you to kill him and need a way. You probably figure it's a trap. All I can do is suggest you get somebody to hire some men and have them take out Tessier. All you risk is some money."

Lostraco was hurting bad but he did send somebody out to find Tessier. Seven days later, the car Tessier used blew up with the man in it.

Jack was bothering me for more information but I gave him little. Later, I didn't even tell him that Lostraco did the killing. He already knew it and I would feel bad in this situation to confirm what had happened. Some of it might be my own guilt over Tessier's death but that did not bother me very much.

The video conferencing was set up with Nicolas providing additional security. We used skype for this so the call could be routed through the skype servers we wanted to use.

I stayed out of the view of the camera but my voice went through. I talked to the psychiatrist as an equal and much of the conversation would bypass Jack. Laverne answered every question she could but many memories were buried deep in her mind.

The doctor came to his conclusions quickly and spent more of his time talking to me. He wanted to help Laverne directly. I had to explain how this could only happen through the computer or through a clandestine meeting so the doctor could not see us or be followed. In any case, it would take time for this to happen and we did not want to stay in a hotel all this time.

The pack followed leads to other criminals and the reports were sent to Jack and now Marcel. We were going to stay long enough to recover seventeen million dollars in Tessier's account. There was lots more property but these accounts were hid from everybody but Tessier.

The students, teachers and pack went house shopping until we found something that came close to being suitable. It was not as big as our home in Toronto but we would make do. There was a lot of remodelling to be done but it would have to wait until we left. This would be the home of the team that would stay here. They would go to the university, protect the city, find recruits and run part of our schools.

The rest of Tessier's empire was disassembled as quick as we could do it. The precedes this time went to the government. Some was done legitimately where the lawyers ate a large portion and some came to us to go into an account that would be seemingly used to pay us.

Tessier's partners and contacts were hit too. Marcel was happy that Jack had come and even accepted help from this group. The RCMP was getting a lot of bad publicity when some of their dirty laundry was hung out. They put a lot of effort out now to make sure they looked very good.

Lostraco and his people were hit too. We concentrated on the small fry as well because these would be the people that would move up and take over when the bosses were removed.

Jack was the one in a bind because he had to mention us as a source of information to his superiors. If he didn't then Marcel would.

Nicolas had added to our computer profiles. Some information was buried very deep and some was heavily encrypted. Flags were set up so we knew just at what stage the people looking for us were at. The computer and the route it used to access the information was also stored. So far they had only found the outer edge with the mostly public information.

The majority of the students left to return to Toronto. They had their vacation. Some of those boys and girls would have to temporarily move to Montreal in rotation to learn more. Cathy Keep wanted another 'restaurant' but we were not ready for it yet.

Kim said verbally, "Piper, Fournier made some great illusions. All we do is tell people to not see us. Let's try to imitate public figures?"

Since her block was up, I knew something was brewing. "What did you come up with, sister of mine?"

Kim's form shimmered and I could see the outline of Herb. He was naked and sporting a larger than life erection. I was surprised that she was able to send this image, it was because we could not push out our compulsions to others of the pack. We could not be invisible to them. Somehow Kim had found the power to overcome this.

"Kim! That's great. How did you do it?"

"It was that husband of ours. He sorted through your report of what was in Fournier's mind and tried it. Laverne and Margot are frightened of men and of women that looked like that dominatrix. He tried to come across as a girl like Joy. Joy, William, Bobby and Missy had to be near to reinforce his illusion but he pulled it off."

"This may be just the trick to use if we have a meeting with Jack and Doctor Michaud. They can see responsible adults."

"I like that. If you see a full grown black panther in the house, you will find Bobby behind the image."

"Show me what you did."

I studied what had been done so far. Forming an image in my mind was not that hard but then I had to remember how the image moved. Sending out the compulsion was not that hard once I learned the tricks but it was far too weak to overcome Kim's natural block. I would have to work much harder for this to work.

The students were just normal people and one was called in to help us with my education. She said, "You look like Herb but you move funny. There are some blank spots when you turn around."

I spent a few hours doing research and trying to perfect this skill. I had to shift to other duties after a while. Administration took a large part of my day. The only one more busy then me was Nicolas because he was using the computers to track criminals and also taking care of our own pool of money.

The pack helped him as much as they could and since we could link to him in an instant, we were nearly as good at the mundane tasks. He was still supreme in getting past firewalls and deducing passwords.

Laverne and Margot were encouraged to help as part of their therapy. Margot's abortion had made her even more despondent but it could not be helped. She was in her second trimester but the fetus was not large. Herb and Ellen had done the majority of the work but we were there to learn and to give her comfort.

Margot was encouraged to work mentally. We did not push but showed her by example. It was Stan that did more than most by being a smart and lovable baby. Jordan though much younger was Stan's protege. Margot was seriously outnumbered.

Neither of the two girls participated in any sex though they saw a lot. It was all very consensual and none of it was threatening. We hoped that one day they would be able to join us of their own accord.

Three weeks after we found the girls, we brought Jack and Dr Michaud to a nice hotel room. They knew of no cameras but Jack had a pocket recorder. There was only a gesture needed before Jack turned it off.

Jack shook hands with Herb but saw a taller man with white hair. Jack said, "I'm glad to meet you Dr Olsen. I was hoping to meet Piper and some of the other people I've talked to recently."

Herb's voice was altered significantly when he said, "Dr Nelson and I will have to suffice this time I'm afraid. The younger group is encouraged to handle the day to day running of the unit but we felt it would be better if you met two people that looked to be adults."

Ellen as Dr Nelson said, "The youngsters are only young in age. They are adults in almost every way."

Dr Michaud asked, "How is it that some people, that sound so young, are able to perform as adults?"

Ellen's illusion smiled and said, "They are very bright to start with. This unit has been nearly thirty years in the making. Some have been groomed since infancy by their parents and those of us that were privileged to help. We have found some staggering facts but as yet, they have to remain secrets to the world and to the two of you. Perhaps one day you may get the chance to learn more."

"How are they different than other young men and women?"

"The minimum IQ is 160 and I'm afraid that this position is held by me. Piper has the highest IQ in our group. She's a bit more than 200. Her child may be the most intelligent person alive. We can only surmise that his IQ should reach at least 250. He's not even a year-old but is acting much older. His cousin Jessica has nearly the same qualifications. She is a very social young lady and would make a wonderful politician one day." She did not talk about Jordan simply because of his age.

"How old is she?"

"Roughly the same age. There is already a friendly competition between them to excel."

Children were discussed for a moment until Jack and Dr Michaud were invited to the next room. There on the floor were Laverne and Margot. Beside them were Jessica and Stan.

Once in the room, Stan said, "Hello Dr Michaud and Mr Entris. Jessica and I are glad to finally meet you."

Jessica said, "Yes. Why don't you pull up some carpet and you can talk to us? Laverne and Margot are frightened of adults and especially males. By sitting your stature will bother them less." The two men did not move and just stared at the two children. "Please, don't be intimidated. We do not bite and rarely have a problem with leakage from out lower orifices."

Ellen as Dr Nelson said, "Please sit."

When they sat, Stan and Jessica shook their hands. Dr Michaud studied them minutely and this included the size of the hands he had held and the type of skin he felt and saw. He said, "I'm incredulous."

Jessica was in front of him and said in French, "We have that effect on people. It's nice at first but after a while it becomes tedious. We still are children, just smart ones. I like to be held by my family and to be sung to at night."

Stan quipped, in the same language, "She likes to show off too but we all seek recognition in one form or another."

Jessica got a little blushed and said, "We should speak in French because Laverne and Margot understand this language better."

When the questions started, the adults left the room but didn't close the door. Stan and Jessica sat in a lap and tried to act as infants. When it got too rough for Laverne, she was obliged to take Jessica to the bathroom. The same thing happened with Margot and Stan. These two could talk mentally which helped shore up Margot's reemerging personality.

Jack took notes with a pad and pen. Dr Michaud made comments in English that were written down. Later the children had to take the two women to the bathroom because they had to go and were finding difficulty holding it. This was exceptionally odd when it was Stan that explained the situation.

An hour later Jessica said, "Let's have a break? The ladies are uncomfortable."

The two men left the room and saw the two young women lifting the children onto the beds and then climbing on beside their friend. On the way out Stan said, "Please close the door while we all take a short nap."

Jack said, "Certainly, Stan. All of you have a rest and we will try to be quiet out here."

Jessica said, "Thank you gentlemen."

Dr Michaud said to Ellen, "That is the strangest situation I have ever heard of."

"What do you mean?"

"I could almost feel that it was the children minding their two charges. When it got hectic, they called a short break. I think that Laverne would have wet the floor if she had not been told to go to the bathroom."

Ellen said, "She is doing better. We have not started any treatments yet. They have just been shown that they are safe. Your assessment would help her parents. In any case, we could not really begin until they were both settled."

"What are you going to prescribe?"

"We have an amazing pharmacology but sadly it's secret. The drugs were originally developed for counter espionage. The rest of the world does not have access to these drugs and in fact nobody outside our own small organisation does."

"What will your medications accomplish?"

"They were originally intended for indoctrination but in this case we can use them to coax out their personalities instead of suppressing them."

"They sound very powerful. In the wrong hands, they could be very dangerous."

"You're right, that is why we are keeping the secret of their composition to only two people."

"Who oks this? I doubt if the Department of Health knows about it."

"You're right, they don't. To answer your other question, I would like you to remember that humans are very adaptable. The newest generation has grown up with electronic games and all sorts of communications equipment. They have learned to multitask the way a busy executive does.

"Portions of this younger generation are testing our equipment. They are supple in both body and mind so that they can do some amazing things. To encourage them to grow to their full potential, the adults sit back and watch. We ask questions but hardly ever interfere with what has been decided. Our veto has hardly ever been used. As a result of this policy we have had a rocky start but then a surprisingly smooth progression.

"Piper is the one in charge. Her leadership qualities are exceptional. The younger group follow her lead mainly because this is what they would do even without her guidance. She more or less expedites what has to be done and organises those that choose to assist.

"Piper is the one that knows a great deal about the drugs and their uses. She is the one that wants them to be used. Her people are fully behind her even though this jeopardises our security."

"How old is Piper?"

"Sixteen."

Dr Michaud was shocked. "And Stan is her child?"

"Certainly. She planned for the child months before he was conceived."

"How many of this young group are there?"

"I'm sorry but that's a secret."

They had room service bring up a large meal later and the children as well as the two young ladies were encouraged to eat. Nonverbal communications were used so Laverne and Margot fed the children. It was just one example of the ways used for the two women to begin to function on their own. After another session the two men left and we hurriedly left the hotel.

We worked much harder on Laverne and Margot to recover. Removing memory and it's associative linkages was dangerous and difficult. The memories of the worst of acts that they saw or were done to them were removed permanently. The human brain kept multiple copies just like a CD or DVD so we had to search them all out. Some memories were substituted, like how Fournier had used drugs to kidnap them. People that died now just disappeared.

Memories of their past were moved up too and were made better than they actually were. As their personalities emerged, we had to shore them up with good memories. Laverne had a happy childhood while Margot was not as lucky. Only one was going to leave us though because of the possibility of her starting to act like Fournier had.

During this time, the pack searched for people that knew about Fournier's abilities and we worked on them as we had with Laverne.

Another restaurant was opened with a great many private rooms on the premises. Cathy Keep was called back to help set this up for us. The street children were again solicited. They were not obligated to perform sexually but only to learn at the school or in the restaurant portion.

In mid June, Laverne cried on my shoulder. For the last two weeks she knew that she was slated to leave us. Her personality had flourished and we had even encouraged her to grow in a logical manner. Her memories of her past with Fournier were dim as if they had happened a very long time ago. More memories were mixed with the drug induced hallucinations she had when on speed.

We altered the memories she did retain so that she would not remember our real faces. She had a set of images in her mind that she plucked out when she saw each of us. Her own mind had assisted us because she did not want to remember what had happened to her. Conversations she had heard that were detrimental to us were smudged or altered.

Her parents had come to visit four times and Dr Michaud had come twice as many times. It was Jack though that got to take the now fourteen-year-old home and present her to her family. We were nearby to monitor the situation and found how soft Jack really was. Jack had to deal with the worst of society and now he got to deal with some of the best.

Margot was doing much better. We pushed thoughts into her mind when we spoke. This helped her learn much faster. We had to find a place for her. She was more than a student but less than a pack member. When she was given the choice of entering the pack, she was all for it.

She was more comfortable with the boys because of the woman that beat her. The boys were literally full of spunk and slowly her mind began to grow. It was only eleven days later that she launched herself at the girls because they had lots of pussy juice that would make her transition even quicker. She would develop everything we now had but she would not be as bright simply because she had stopped growing the way Herb and Ellen had.

The intervening months were hectic. We had to secure our home and facilities here in the city. People would have to go to a few colleges at one time to gather the mundane courses that would slow them down once they gained university. The RCMP and then other organisations began to dig through our garden of planted data. They were usually too busy processing other information that had to do with upcoming court cases.

Also during this time I learned to cloak myself in various images that allowed me to move about more easily. Sometimes I was an old woman or a big hunk that all the women would look at.

Bobby surprised me with his panther approaching me one night. I knew he was going to try to eventually try to frighten me and I had learned to form a large tiger. As soon as the panther crouched as if ready to attack, the tiger appeared and jumped on the panther. Bobby was so shocked that the panther disappeared almost instantly. In moments I pounced on Bobby and tickled him until he was ready to pee himself.

Jordan, Stan and Jessica were nearby and floating a metre off of the floor. They squirmed as they felt what their friend Bobby had just experienced.

In our scouting missions, we went downtown. The three youngest had to go in strollers to fit in. Melissa was walking funny because she had been in one of her subservient moods and Herb had pounded both of her lower openings until she finally had enough.

While this was going on, Kim and I were having fun with some of the new girls. It was our way of welcoming them to the school and to a much better life. It was funny in a way because the street people had their minds expanded by being on their own. They were not as uptight as those that had been raised in a comfortable environment. Few of those condoned male/male sex, nor girl/girl sex but the males would want to watch.

We scanned the streets for young people. The babies were scanning too but usually tired of this after a short while. They attracted a lot of attention somehow when many otherwise preoccupied women had to stop to talk to them. The children had learned not to talk to the strangers simply because we would be tied up for half an hour talking about them.

A small park drew us and we put the babies on the swings and pushed them. They thought this was lots of fun even though they could fly faster than they were swinging.

Later we sat at a table as Stan and Jessica ran around. Jordan wanted to go too but a four month old baby running would raise more eyebrows than the ones that were not quite a year-old yet.

Melissa said, "I miss Toronto. This city is nice, it's just not home."

I said, "I don't think we can go back just yet. Jack's boss wants us to take a short vacation in Halifax to see what we can do to clean up some of the crime. Marcel wants us to go to Quebec City. Jack wants to clean Toronto but nobody wants us to go to Ottawa and start finding dirty laundry. They are afraid some politician would have to quit. Not too many make it to jail."

"So where are we going?"

"Why Ottawa of course."



-------

Chapter 7


From a few kilometres away we heard, "I found somebody who needs help." It was Bobby. The replies came a moment later and we just listened to them. This was not an emergency. These kind of calls came in all the time. A lot of people needed assistance.

The kids ran back to the carriages and we put them in. Some teenage boys came by and stopped. They liked what they saw but none of us flirted. We had a goal now. We left the disappointed boys behind as we hurried through the park.

Information was coming in as we walked. Montreal caught many of the immigrants to Canada. There was a boy that attracted Bobby's attention and then his twin brother arrived. They were born in Banghazi Libya. They were not runaways but they lived a very rough life. Bobby was sending more than the usual amount of data because he wanted to find a way to help them. I admitted to myself that they were not good material for the school but they could fit in.

Bobby started to talk to them. They were a year younger than him. They had few friends. Their father was a nut case. He beat the boys, their sister and their mother consistently. They had arrived in Canada six months ago but had yet to go to school. The children did odd jobs and gave the money to the father who bought marijuana and hashish for his own consumption.

We got to the community centre and pushed our carriages in. There were lots of mothers here but only one that was as young as me. Bobby brought the two boys over and introduced Qudamah and Amid to us. They were average looking but they had many scars visible on their faces as Bobby had told us.

I shook hands with one boy then the next and said, "I'm glad to meet you." They did not understand English very well so I searched their mind and said in poor Arabic, "We came over here for some exercise. Do you want to play—basketball?"

The boys were Muslim and the mixing of genders was not done but the two were young. Bobby got a ball and began to show off his ball handling ability. Since this game was along gender lines, Kim and Melissa had to help.

The babies went to the wall to watch while Kim threw the ball up. I stumbled on purpose and Amid took off with the ball. He could not play well and double dribbled a lot. We gave chase but let him have a chance to shoot. Kim caught the rebound and tried to make her way to the other basket but Qudamah stole the ball and went back.

Bobby got the ball and sunk a basket to give them a small lead. This was not much exercise for us but it was fun to see the boys run their hearts out. They were not in shape so Melissa sunk a basket to show them that they could not slack off.

Bobby gathered reinforcements and then so did Kim. We were all exhorting the children to try harder to win. Two young men about fifteen and sixteen joined in. They played rough and knocked the younger children around. They even used the ball as a weapon the way I had to Sandy Donaldson's face years ago.

I contemplated stopping the game and getting the boys to leave but I saw an opportunity. The two boys were here recruiting just as I was. They were in a gang that usually got in trouble. Some was for money but most was to reduce the boredom in their lives.

More boys and young men were here and in the gang. This was a safe place for them to meet and talk. They were now watching the two with us. They were not the leaders and this was looked on as a form of testing.

Eventually Kim got the ball and took off down the court. The older boy got in the way. He had a grin because he was going to knock Kim down and get a chance to feel her breasts and pussy. Kim stopped three metres away and the basket ball flew out the way I had once thrown a soccer ball. The boy caught it in the face. The ball bounced back and Kim raced around the boy to sink a basket.

I studied the two. They came from Chernivts in the Ukraine. Their fathers were violent men that had used intimidation and even beatings to get what they wanted. The boys saw nothing wrong with this. It worked in the Ukraine and it worked here.

The two were out for blood now. They were going to tackle Kim so it was me that took the ball. Both charged at Kim until the one that had been hit by the ball before got it again when I hit the side of his head. Kim used her foot and swept this guy off his feet and into the path of the other. They went down and Melissa took off with the ball and sunk a basket.

She called out, "Too bad the boys want to play a different game than we do."

One of the women that watched this finally saw what was happening and came over. The two guys got up and were looking for blood. The woman hurried up and got in front of them. She was shorter than they were and she said, "You two leave."

The one to be hit twice said, "Fuck off, bitch." What he said was in Ukrainian.

I said in the same language, "In the Ukraine you can act like a bully and get away with it. You are not there now. Your fathers are bullies too but they would not pick on children."

The other one said with a grin, "You are not a child."

I walked up to him and said as I touched his forehead, "Not long ago I put a 45 APC round right here. Do you really want to try me?"

I did not have to cast pain or even fear because the guy believed me. Both of them left right away. We all stopped to see them go.

The woman said to me in French, "What caused all this?"

Kim said, "They were hurting the children for the fun of it. One wanted to play football not basketball. I let him taste the ball the way he gave it to others. The flavour was not to his liking. Look around at the youngsters that were crying or had bloody noses."

Bobby pushed in and spoke like one of the locals. "Those guys hurt us. The girls saved us." The woman ignored Bobby when he went into the act but she had no issues with us.

Before the woman left, a girl came over and asked Qudamah in Arabic, "What happened?" She was their ten year-old sister, Fadiyah.

Qudamah spoke fast then remembered that I spoke his language and placed himself so I could not hear. Apparently he had seen the two that had been expelled before.

The three children were bright and inquisitive but this last feature was being beat out of them. Fadiyah was coming to her father's notice and her mother had to be near to save her from his sexual advances. The girl was ready to run though she loved her brothers and mother.

The game had fractured but Bobby had started to teach the guys his ball handling abilities. He was not doing anything a normal could not do yet but he might if we let him.

The rest of us walked over to the babies and the girls on our team came too. They liked the way Kim tripped the guys and the way Kim and I used the ball offensively. Once we had the babies in our arms, the girls focus turned to the children and we were forgotten. The babies were pouring out the charm and the girls had no chance at all.

Jordan wanted to be fed and as yet he had not been weaned. Our slave had an exhibitionist streak no matter what she said and Jordan was firmly attached. Stan and Jessica were on the bottle only because Kim and I were so busy. They liked the closeness that Jordan enjoyed and Kim and I became pacifiers for them. It made us feel closer to our children too. In a minute the two settled down but Stan usually used his free hand to hold my other breast as if making sure it was going to be there when he needed it. Perhaps he was also thinking like his father.

In half an hour, Jordan was full and taking a nap and then so were Jessica and Stan. The noise in the large room did not bother them. During this time we scanned those around us for how we could help them. We went back to basketball and it was now Melissa's turn to show what she knew.

Bobby and Melissa started doing long distance shots and were basically showing off. One was still a kid and the other was just a big kid. The two got into a competitive spirit and sunk baskets from mid-court. Their respective teams would return the balls. They were not guiding the balls after they left their hands so they were only getting about 60%. Soon this was not enough and each backed up. The building quieted as the children and the adults saw the competition.

The shooting escalated until the two were as far away as they could go and still getting baskets a third of the time. The competition grew when Bobby jumped higher and higher and then shot at the maximum height he reached. Melissa did the same then had to use her abilities to support her breasts when landing. She did not have a sports bra.

When the adults that worked at the complex came over, I said, "If you two are finished showing off, we should leave. They are thinking of asking you if you want to go professional. One wants to be your manager."

Melissa stopped but Bobby had to get in a few more shots. They then had to answer questions or at least try to be polite and avoid them. It took five minutes to get away and we went outside to simply get away. Most of our respective teams came with us.

I said to Bobby, "How does it feel to be headed for a professional team?"

"Don't rub it in. I made a mistake."

I said, "It was fun though?"

He gave me a big smile. Just because we were smart, didn't make us immune to what our glands made us do.

Fadiyah was looking at Melissa with hero worship and her two brothers were looking at Bobby the same way. The other children were too and in varying amounts. I wondered how I could help the three Arabic speaking children. The father was going to rape his daughter someday and probably beat one of his family to death or at least put them in the hospital.

Bobby said, "You can find where their father gets his drugs and follow it up the line and then down. You give the info to Marcel so he will prosecute."

"Sounds like a plan, Bobby. Get what you can from the kids and we'll start."

There was an ice-cream concession nearby and I acted like a kid too. I bought everybody something to eat.

Fadiyah said in Arabic to me, "How do you know our language?"

I had to smile because I did not know it very well at all. I used her mind to help me formulate my speech. I lied and said, "I had a friend once who spoke the language. I stayed over at her house a lot."

The girl had a sad thought, she did not have any friends over. "How come you guys are so good?" She meant using the basket ball.

"We practice a lot. We go to a special school that pushes us to do our best."

"All of you?" She meant did Bobby go there too. "Do they speak Arabic there?"

"No, but we learn French and English quickly." Since she was thinking of Bobby and his possible elevation to a professional team, I said, "Bobby is one of the best in out school. He likes sports but I think he will probably be a lawyer or a politician. He doesn't know himself."

Bobby liked the girl. He was not the one to chalk up conquests but he liked to flirt. The girl was about the same age as Bobby and not really ready to enter into most of the games we played in our group. Her upbringing was lacking in much of what she needed to survive and avoid pregnancy. Here it was the street that would help her more than her parents.

The Libyan children knew very little about their father's business. We could take a stroll through their neighbourhood and see if we could find more. The area was not far and a trip through the park was far more preferable than along city streets. Eight tagalongs walked with us one other girl a year older than Fadiyah wanted to be near us.

Bobby gave his thoughts on the school and the pack. This was to show that he felt that he belonged where he now was. He pushed a proper respect for education. To hammer this down, he used instances where education could be used to find a niche for everybody while those with little education took the jobs that did not necessarily fit them.

We had been walking only ten minutes when I felt some excitement ahead then so did the rest of our pack. Bobby kept talking but most of his intellect, like ours, was focussed around us.

Kim said, "Well, Piper, what are we going to do? It looks like only the two we shamed want to really hurt us."

"This gang is particularly vicious and I'd like to show the ringleaders how their victims can fight back."

Melissa said, "Giving them a lot of pain will do nothing to their outlook on life. We will have to tinker. Do you want to take the time to do it?"

"What do you think, Bobby?"

"We are going to have to fight. It will make the gang more receptive to our ideas. It will also give the children with us a positive role models. You keep telling us the old maxim about the trip of a thousand miles starting with one step."

"Well I guess we can start at the bottom as well as taking out the twisted businessmen."

Bobby said aloud to those with us, "We have a learning experience for all of you. We wanted to show you how we fight. This time our group has to be more careful than usual. We want our opponents to learn that they cannot use force all the time and get away with it."

I translated Bobby's words into Arabic and added, "When the lesson starts you may be afraid but don't worry. None of them are armed with more than a knife." Those with us were worried and I said in Arabic and then in English, "You are not in danger. If we were, we would turn around. We have our children with us. We wouldn't take them into danger."

Qudamah said, "Who is it?"

"The two boys that were mean to us earlier. They have some friends with them. They want to hurt Kim and me. They are just children so we will not cause any permanent damage but I'm afraid we are going to give them a lot of pain. It's like a daddy spanking a bum. He loves his children but wants them to listen. These boys need a stronger spanking or they won't learn anything."

"Where are they?"

"They are ahead of us and waiting for us to walk by them. They think they are like soldiers. They're only children playing at soldier. If any of you want to go, you can leave now. It will seem like you only walked part way with us."

Fadiyah said, "Are you really able to beat them? They're mean. They beat up an old man and took his wallet once."

"They did it more than once. Now what do you want to do?"

There was a pause while she decided then she said, "I'll stay and maybe help you. I can fight."

Amid and Qudamah quickly added, "We can help too."

Melissa said, "Thanks guys but there is not enough here to get us going. Kim and Piper are going to do the fighting and we are going to watch. If there were a lot then Bobby and I would fight too."

The children looked at her, unsure of her words. Her body language and the inflection in her voice told then as much as her words.

We left the tarmac path and walked on the grass even closer to where the boys were hiding behind the trees. Bobby and I told the children with us the number of the boys and where they were. Mentioning the names of our antagonists helped. We could not talk much about each because we were getting close.

The children shifted to our left and away from the bullies we were approaching. We wanted some room. Fadiyah and the other girl were to push Stan, Jordan and Jessica away for us to give even more room.

It was very hard for the children to not look at where our antagonists were going to spring out from.

Eight boys or young men sprang out at us. The children with us began to run but surprisingly only the two girls pushed Stan, Jordan and Jessica away.

Kim and I worked methodically and kicked and punched. Our aim was not to incapacitate them but to cause the maximum amount of pain. This meant that we had to just sting one then go to another and then another. This tactic cause them to lose their cool and attack us even more aggressively.

Bobby and Melissa sat to watch and only one boy sat with them. As we bloodied noses Bobby commented to the children about our style and form. He soon stopped because none of them were listening to him.

Stan, Jordan and Jessica bitched to Melissa and she had to move the carriages to one side so they could see the action.

Soon the ringleaders brought out their weapons and we started to really hurt those ones. Dislocated shoulders was the usual punishment but then they did not want to play anymore.

After five minutes of abuse, the gang decided to withdraw or actually just run away and leave their compatriots. Kim and I were not breathing hard. We could see through Melissa's and Bobby's eyes and also read the thoughts of the gang members that were still mobile. We attacked now and brought down the remaining gang members.

With everybody on the ground, Melissa and Bobby got up and approached. We held onto one of the gang and implanted some ideas that we hoped would flourish. This took only a few minutes then we went to one more.

When we were done. We went around and checked to see how much damage they sustained. The dislocated shoulders were put back in place but nothing else was done to them. They were not cured by any means and our tinkering would take time to geminate.

The boys were dragged off the grass by their collars and put in the shade. We just waited and during this time we started to form images in our minds and then push them into theirs. Bobby had his leopard at his feet licking its chops as if wanting to eat the boys. Melissa had us all holding Mac-11s casually in our hands.

When the boys started to come to, they looked around in fright but didn't dare move. I had to go around and prod the rest until they awoke too. Once they got a chance to get their bearings, I said, "The Avengers had some stupid leaders. You want some excitement so you rob people and then hurt them. Your gang didn't stand up to two young mothers very well."

Those on the ground didn't like the words but didn't have the gumption to say I was wrong. "I want the Avengers to stay together as a gang but now you have to help others. You might not know it now but soon you will feel bad about all the nasty things you have done. You can still fight if attacked but you will be handicapped. You will also find that you want to get an education. This may come a shock to you because most of you have dropped out of school."

I continued by saying, "Many of you come from dysfunctional families as do most of your friends. You can change but you require more effort. I'm giving you a chance."

They looked at me seriously but they needed just a bit more. "By the way, I did not lie about the 45. Adults that threaten me or my friends usually do not get a second chance."

Bobby's cat growled loudly and we walked away. I could feel the gang fearing that the cat would kill them but the image seemed to lope after us. Children and some adults had gathered because they had seen the last of the fight. They stared at us and at the gang but did nothing.

Fadiyah was excited and said, "I never saw anybody fight so fast. They didn't even touch you and there were eight of them. I wish I could do that."

I said, "Learning to fight is good. You learn to stand up for yourself and you learn self-confidence."

Amid said, "I want to learn how to fight too."

"Amid, it's more than that. I think that when you get older, you would be the type of boy that would join a gang. You would hurt people and then steal. I do not know if you would grow out of this before you started to kill. You need to understand what makes you a human being and then chose a path that will allow you to grow into a man we would all be proud to know."

"I wouldn't join a gang like that. I'd help people."

"You're young. When you grow, you will see that people are hard to like. You would help until you saw that you were being used and then you would be angry at yourself."

"I wouldn't do that."

"I'm sorry Amid, but you would."

At the other side of the park, I politely shed the children. They saw us meeting an adult and we got into a van. We did say goodbye to each of them and gave some hugs.

Once far enough away, we started to look for drug dealers or people thinking strongly of drugs. Only a fraction of the people were like this but there was enough for us to get a start.

The rest of the pack was busy gathering their own intelligence about other criminals so we worked alone for the most part. We found where Fadiyah lived but neither parent was at home.

Our investigation took us until supper time and we called for our van to come by and pick us up. We usually tried to have at least breakfast and supper as a family even if the pack was large. We socialised more then went back to work because that was when the pushers were most likely to make some sales.

We found Fadiyah's parents and walked up the steps until we were near the door. We managed to get enough information to find the man's suppliers and also a list of his alternate suppliers.

I wanted to work on the man as I had the gang but he was different. The gang were young and out looking for fun. Basically they were malleable. The father's name was Haddad. He had simply spent too many years taking drugs for us to realistically think that he would quit. There was no incentive for him to do so.

He was sadistic and all we could do would be to trigger pain if these tendencies got too strong. The man was basically lazy, meaning he would do nothing to support the family. He would steal to get drugs and he had already killed two men, one of which was here in Canada. Basically there was no chance to reform him.

His sons though followed what he did and would do so in the future unless they were nudged onto a different course. I did not know how this could be done without us taking a hand. They needed a strong and good father.

It took only a few hours to find the majority of the pushers and through them their customers. There was a lot of information here and it had to be typed up in a report form.

We found people further up the pipeline and we headed to nicer neighbourhoods to see what they had for us.

Melissa took the children home. Jordan was already asleep but we knew he didn't mind going for a ride with us.

Kim, Bobby and I followed our leads. We had split up when we could but now we were three groups.

It was dangerous in any big city at night and we went looking in some places looking for some particular individuals. As a sideline we also tried to save some foolish people.

I entered a nightclub looking like a woman of twenty five. My boobs were almost hanging out and the doorman was happy to let me in. Drugs were freely available here.

I had not got in more than two steps when a young man propositioned me.

With a smile, I said, "Thanks, but I'm looking for my husband."

"I can help you find him."

"That might help me but he tends to kill people that get too close. You can come if you want. I keep the running total in my head." The man was frightened now and did not even excuse himself before he left.

After gathering what information from those in the nightclub, I left. Just a few doors down, I stepped into an alley and returned as a man of thirty with muscles in his shit. This persona would give me more room to manoeuvre.

A block down the street I detected three men making a hole in the wall of a jewellery store from the basement of an adjoining store. One of the men was the son of the store owner that they were working in.

The only way to catch them was to have them caught red handed in the jewellery store. We had contacts other then the RCMP in Montreal and I used a cell phone to call one. The man had been asleep.

"Hello Andre. This is Zip. I'm sorry to awaken you but I have some fun for you and possibly a little asterisk beside your name."

"Ahhh—hello Zip. What have you found?"

"Somebody is digging through the wall into a jewellery store. They found a way to deactivate the alarm. There's no rush but they will be through in forty minutes or so. I'd suggest you roust the owner and prepare a party for the guests when they arrive."

"Why can't we just go to the other side of the wall? They will be breaking in."

"The neighbour's son is the one doing this and they are working through the foundation wall from the next building."

"Where is it?"

I gave him the address of the jewellery store, the names of the thieves and the address of the store they were digging from. I even added the ways the thieves would use to escape and the weapons they carried.

Andre said, "You told me everything."

"I left lots out so you would have something to do. Now have fun, I've got other work to do."

"Thanks Zip."

Bobby stopped two car thefts that night. If the culprits were young, he usually used one or more black panthers to escort him. His body was altered too so he was big for even a professional football player. Usually they fled with wet spots on their jeans. The police got the ones who were not children.

All of the pack had halted muggings when we were out in an urban environment. These we stopped ourselves and we usually had to use force. Customarily the victims wanted to run so they found themselves not able to walk very well. Most of the time though there were some very large men surrounding the victim so they found it conducive to their present state of health that they stay. Other times we were too late and we had to call for an ambulance and render first aid.

When we got home, Kim and Bobby gave me their reports. The accounts were combined and I sent off the extensive file to Marcel. He would deal with it.

I had a contact with the Montreal police dealing with drugs but since four of the men on the team were arrested for shaking down the drug peddlers or selling drugs, our reports were not getting the attention they needed.

We had also found links to the provincial police during our investigations. Marcel and Jack had to take care of this for us and we had a chance to vet those doing the investigation. There were so many groups involved that it was hard for any of the police to 'forget' some important fact. This was especially after they heard some of their phone calls played back to them. All in all, we had a lot of cops pissed off at us but by no means all of them. There were still a lot of good cops.

During the next week, we went through the minds of a lot of criminals. Jack had gone back to Ontario but we now knew Marcel well enough that we could link to some criminals through his mind. We worked through other officers too and made more reports on what the perps had done that was not known or not convicted of.

The courts were clogged but the lawyers and the rest of the judiciary worked much quicker than usual. Those that tried to stall had some of the skeletons in their closet rattled. They were anxious to keep them there. We never told them what to do, only to do it quickly. Some had thought this a perfect opportunity to get the case thrown out until we dug up more skeletons.

Our own identities in the government computers were being dug out. They had not got all the way in yet but I was sure that at some time in the future, they would.

Fadiyah's father was arrested when he started to beat on his family. The police found drugs on the man and had been told where more of the drugs were in his apartment. Another officer came with a warrant. He found the drugs and a gun. The man was arrested on many charges now and lead away.

No sooner was the man lead away in cuffs but two very sympathetic women from Children's Services arrived. They knew almost everything we knew and it was not long before the mother broke down and confirmed the abuse.

Montreal had been good to us. We started another school and tried to make it different than the one in Toronto just so people would not draw dangerous parallels. Again all the young people were assessed and some of them were allowed to join the school and learn our secret. This only happened after they got the compulsion not to speak of this to others or where others may hear them.

Seven girls and three boys were elevated from the school to the pack and we started to experience some growing pains.

I said to Kim, "We talked about the need to split up into smaller groups. It's time we started. We can cover more area and move a lot quicker."

"I don't want to leave my friends, Piper. I love them."

I gave her a kiss and said, "I do too but we cannot stagnate and we cannot travel around with hundreds of people. This has been planned long ago and its time to start. We just break up into smaller groups and those in the groups mix the same way families do."

"I've never been more happy than when I was in the pack. It will be like ripping out my heart."

The rest of the pack was informed of my concern and we talked about it like we usually did. This was not new to them because we had discussed this a lot. It was just now that the time had come, we were hesitant to pursue what had to be done. Nobody wanted to break up the family but I explained how we could grow better with more responsibilities and we were only a phone call away.

All this brought up other pains besides separation. The pack was strong because we thought over our problems as almost a single entity. This could not happen if we were far apart.

Herb said, "You need to set up a clan organisation or better yet a corporation. There will be meetings all the time. That way we are appraised of what's happening. This way we have to write up a charter the same as a corporation. Everybody votes on it and signs it. That way there will be less hassles in the future. This gives the pack a way to plan for the future. Growth is inevitable and there is more danger as we get bigger. Perhaps we can find a way to minimize this."

We talked about this too and the pack liked the ideas. The students were appraised of what we were doing and this meant that phone calls had to be made. Those same students may one day be pack members and they needed a say now before the documents were made.

The pack prepared to leave Montreal in a week. The charter had been written up and we were close enough for everybody to have a hand in its crafting and be comfortable with it.

The majority of the pack left Montreal a week later. Brandon and Tatum would be staying and so were William and Dina. They were all responsible adults now and they wanted to start their own families. Brandon and William still liked other guys but then again Dina and Tatum liked other girls. If they made a single family then this may be best but this may not be viable. It all depended on love and with telepathy, there would be fewer misunderstandings.

Joseph and Pete had worked out very well and I was ashamed of myself when I thought to let Joseph die. We had tinkered just a bit with his mind and he slowly changed to the way we wanted. These two would be working with us as roving troubleshooters. There were just too many places to be to catch even a small fraction of what hurt society. They were looking for people like Herb's family as well as those that Knox had let go before she changed her mind.

Nicolas had left a month ago with Missy and April, one of our new girls. They were preparing our way by finding out about the city of Ottawa. Nicolas was bright and resourceful and he needed a chance to spread his wings.

Ellen hurt to leave Brandon and William above all the rest. They were lovers on many levels. Ellen had taught them and gave herself freely. They wanted her for their wife but it was Ellen that pushed that they have one or more of their own and they had to be closer to their age. The fact that Nicolas was in Ottawa and Anthony would stay with us, made the parting bearable.



-------

Chapter 8


The remainder of the pack pulled out of Montreal slowly and travelled to our nation's capital. The students had to stay until we made arrangements for their lodging.

Ottawa was one of the most beautiful cities in Canada. It was actually rated one of the best cities in the world to live. It was not as glamourous as some but it was safer. We were going to make it even better.

We met Nicolas. He had his block up but wore a smile so I knew we were in for a surprise. He said, "You are going to love the city. Warm now and cold in the winter but always nice."

I did not want to intrude on his secret so I just said, "I suppose they have lots of things here to keep you interested?"



"Oh, they do. I love the art galleries and the museums."

"What else do you like?"

"Well, now that you mention it, it's the computers here. Getting into the Canadian ones are not that hard. It still takes time. The Russian Embassy took me four days until I thought of a substitute."

"And what substitute was that?"

"I went after the Israeli Embassy and got into their computer."

"You said that would be the hardest."

"It was, it took me twice as long. Those guys are devious. There were traps all over the place as if they didn't trust anybody. They didn't even have faith in their own people. There were lots of heavily encrypted files and they were hard to open but I found the pattern just a while ago."

"What did you find?"

"Copies of our birchbark war canoe and the method to get into all the other embassy computers in the area. The Americans thought they had a good system but Israeli Intelligence was in it in no time."



He wanted me to ask so I said, "What did you find?"

"Israeli Intelligence already had all the spies marked and all I had to do was grab the file. I didn't believe what I read so we went around and checked ourselves. The Russians have spies people can see and others that look inept are actually good at gathering intelligence.

"The CSIS has some files set up as a blind like we do and since it is hard to get at, everybody that gets in thinks it's the truth. The Americans have done the same thing."

I said, "There's more Nicolas."

Nicolas was a little hesitant then said, "I worked through some people from the Australian Embassy and got us accepted into Gatineau Club. The wives of most of the ambassadors go there to swap gossip."

"You have your block up Nicolas. Tell me about this."

His block stayed in place. "I met some of the people in External Affairs and then passed myself off as an undersecretary. I mentioned our philanthropic arm and got you invited. I figure this is a good chance to hobnob while you are searching out dirt."



"I look sixteen Nicolas and there are sure to be cameras there."

"Well, I sorta put Herb into the bureaucracy. He's a new hire and has lots of potential."

"You what!"

"Don't get mad. You said to set the stage for moving here and I did the best I could. You want to shift from a clandestine operation to one that has a public face. Herb will be the first but we all have to be slipped in. If we are found out at some future date, then it will look like the government was doing this to hide our identities for their own purposes. We need a lobbyist to listen for bad laws and then try to promote ones we want. You said a few months ago that we have to get into politics and this is the way."

"This frightens me Nicolas. You should have talked a lot more about this before you did it."

"Piper, you said I was good enough to work on my own. You also said I had a good head on my shoulders. Before I left, you gave me directions and I followed them. I may have acted like the bureaucracy in how I interpreted them but I did not overstep my bounds in any area."

"Then why is your block up?"

"Because I'm not finished and I want to give you the data a piece at a time."

"Ok, go on."

"Apex University is privately held. It has assets worth over three hundred million dollars. It's in debt up to its eyeballs. There is talk of decertification. It has been warned twice. The third one means a one year probation. The provincial and federal governments have chipped in but not enough. There was a scandal that started it and the alumnae have not been supporting the school like they had before. You wanted to start a school and I figured we could just take over one that already has a name. We can get it running the way it should in a few years. We start a new campus in each city that we want and even get into a research campus. A good place to hide."



He paused and I could see that he was worried. "Did you think alumnae or alumni?"



"The former. It's an all girls school."

"So you bought the school?"

"No, I just bought all the outstanding loans. They will eventually not be able to pay so we can restructure what has to be done."

"Where did the money come from? I didn't see this in the papers I got from you or the accountants."

"One of the Columbian drug cartels donated the money and a bit more. They think their major rival has found a way to attack them. Our corporation pays a lot of taxes still so we can almost get a dollar for dollar break. This is a lot better than making a charitable donation. I can make it seem that the money came from one of our accounts in Canada."

"Is there more?"



Nicolas dropped his block slower than usual and I looked at the data he put there for me to see. The total cost was going to be higher than Nicolas mentioned but it was not coming out of our pockets. Thanks to the Columbians, we would even save on our taxes.

The school was in need of extensive repairs. There were only 632 students in residence and another hundred on work assignments. Sixty full and part-time staff were here. There were thirty five full-time faculty when there should be more. Many were old and ready to retire and Nicolas saw them as worn out or possibly not inspired. I had to consider pensions. A handful of students worked at the school for a few hours a week but not many. The library was the most out of date and we needed somebody to manage this a lot better. Computers were what popped into my mind.

The school had some business courses, language studies as well as a fair program in Political Science. There was a poor sports program. The students that the school attracted were far from the best. The private school catered to foreign students in two ways. It was a university but also a school to bring up their foreign students' academic standings. Some of those coming from some countries were the equivalent of our students in grade six. Apex upgraded their language skills and prepared them for entry into a more prestigious university or their own.

Almost half of the students did not speak English very well and they were taught their courses by multilingual professors that were also teaching them our language.

Many of the courses stressed the woman's place in their respective countries and I was happy to see that the school was trying to elevate that position a bit at a time and prepare the student for the conflict she would have at home.

There was something else hidden in Nicolas' mind but I did not dig. "What's it that you're hiding?"

Nicolas smiled and this block disappeared quickly. He had found a nice home out of town on a hundred and seven hectares of land. It was nice but much too small.

There was also a large apartment building that was being presently converted to luxury condos. Nicolas had found the building being gutted with a small crew and sensed that the owner was in trouble. Upon investigation he saw that this was the case. Nicolas pushed the illusion that he was much older and offered the three brothers that owned the building a fair price. At the moment they were ready to accept it but it was not ours yet.

The construction would not normally be complete for another seven months but we could hurry it up with the infusion of more money. If we got the condos, it would be because of the giving natures of the jolly Columbian drug lords Nicolas found.



"What's the chance that the Columbians will find us?"

"None unless somebody tells them. The only tracks I left, point to their competitors. Those leads were buried deep but could be found."

"How much did you get?"

"A few million shy of a half billion."



"Not bad for a young man with magic fingers." Nicolas blushed and smiled.

We settled in a hotel again because the house on the farm was undergoing extensive around the clock renovations.

Apex University was not that far out of town and we visited it. There was a security gate that we had to go through that was part of the reason some parents sent their daughters here. There was a tall fence around the buildings to keep young men from slipping in or young ladies slipping out. The buildings were of cut stone and looked good. The majority of the students stayed all year round and they were presently in classes. We saw some and one was quite young.

There were three residential areas. One group was for the faculty and staff. The other two were connected with walkways with a small central park common to all four units. All but a very few of the 632 residents lived here and there was room for a total of 1800. The school was certainly underused.

Nicolas said, "An influential and I might add, rich, eastern diplomat found out that his lovely daughter liked to spend her time between one of her female professor's legs. When he came to check on it personally, he found that the students could actually meet young men without too much difficulty. This apparently was what really affected him. He pulled his daughter and then so did many other ultra conservative diplomats."



"When did this happen?"

"Five years ago. Word got around and many parents pulled their children. I'm not sure but this diplomat probably started a rumour that the school was going coed. This hastened the departure of the students."

"What do you see as a way to reverse the trend?"

"We throw a lot of money at repairing the buildings. Staff and educators have to be evaluated. Those that are too old to do a good job are given a pension. The rest may be encouraged to work a little harder. We then have to find many more and also advertise how we have made vast improvements in the school. There are a lot of problems in the school. Basically the students that graduate cannot get a job because they are not trained well enough."

"Your plan may work."



Nicolas added, "Our own female students could go to the university to swell the ranks until we make it coed. Alternately, we could form a new campus so we can use the school name. The students slated to join the pack and those in the pack do what we do best and use our minds to dream up new ideas or devices. When we start selling patents for the things we develop then more students will come."

I asked, "What do you know about the Political Sciences Department?"



"Not that much. They're mediocre professors in a small unremarkable school."

"I hope you have some leads on some better educators?"

"A few, but the corporation that owns the school may not be ready to sell."

"Aren't you getting the cart before the horse? We haven't talked to the school administrators or the board of directors yet."

"They're in trouble and they know it. I can get an appointment to discuss their debts and long term prospects. I'm pretty sure we can arrange matters the way we want after they see reason."



We settled into the hotel but only after visiting the farm. The house was big but small compared to what we had become used to. Bobby saw the farm equipment that came with the farm and now wanted to become a gentleman farmer. I was not going to dissuade him because he was a very determined young man. The pack thought of horses and they all wanted to be cowboys except some wanted to be cowgirls.

It looked like we would have to stay in the hotel at least a week. The pack was set free to be tourists and to sniff out both kinds of prey. Runaways for the school were easier to find and so were low level criminals. This time we were going to expand our search for young adults.

Three days after we arrived, Herb, Ellen, Nicolas and I met Dean Addams. She was a large woman. Nicolas had grown a lot and so had I but we still used pseudonyms and illusions.

"Welcome, welcome. Please have a seat."

Herb appeared just as big and about the same age as the Dean. "Thanks Dean Addams."

"Please call me Joan. There is no need for formality."

Once we got comfortable, Nicolas said in his forty year old voice, "I would like to take our time and be polite but both of us are busy people. Do you mind if we get down to business?"

"Not at all Mr Comp."

"Please call me Ron and thank you. We have bought up all the school's outstanding loans." The Dean was very nervous now. Nicolas said, "Your school needs an additional seven point eight million to function for this year alone. There are other long term projects that need to be completed and they total thirty five million."

Nicolas now waited for the Dean to speak. "Are you trying to purchase the school?"

We all had read the Dean's worries and Nicolas said, "We wish to perpetuate the school and broaden the courses offered. We do not wish the school to close. We want to make some changes though."

"What changes are they, Mr Comp?"

"More than half of the students are learning English as they take university courses. This I think is one of your better attributes. Students with many backgrounds find ways of working together. Not all the students that graduate find work. We can do better.

"The remainder of your students come from conservative countries. They are segregated here so they can get a good education and still not be corrupted by male influences. Basically this portion of your school takes a student and gives her enough education to enter one of the prestigious universities on this continent or to enter into the university portion of Apex.

"Ever since one father took exception to his daughter's activities, enrollment has fallen and students have even left. New students have not arrived. You are in danger or losing your charter. The quality of your programmes has fallen markedly and the government has stepped in. This will mean that the school will have to close. We do not see a way for the present administration and the board of directors of avoiding the third warning or the culmination a year later.

"We have some ideas that will allow the school to not only remain open but to grow. This means we will contribute more to erect buildings dedicated to science and mathematics.

"This sort of commitment can only be done if we have control of the school."

The Dean said, "We cannot go coed. All the students would be pulled then. What are your plans about the faculty and staff?"

"It's very hard to draw good professors quickly. If we gain control of this institution, we will have to assess everybody individually. This means that tenure would have to be broken. A reduction in force is a necessary evil. We would keep all of those that we could."

Joan said, "I cannot make deals for the board of directors."

"We are well aware of that. We have a meeting with the majority holders on the board of directors this afternoon. The head of the board already knows our position from the documents we sent her. We simply spoke to you first to get your ideas on how to proceed."

"What could I possibly give to you?"

"The school needs qualified leadership. That leadership has to know the failings of the faculty, the buildings and the equipment. We would like you to attend the meeting with us and give your opinions."

She nodded her head and hoped that she would keep her job when the dust settled. Part of this was because she felt that part of the problems at the school were caused by fraud. Costs were skyrocketing and she could not get the board of directors to work on this. The situation lead her to believe that some on the board of directors were swilling at the same trough.

We talked about what the school needed to bring it up to one of the leading institutions and especially the cost to accomplish this task. The figure far surpassed what was needed to get the school to its usual state.

Nicolas brought out but did not show Dean Addams the paperwork to show that we held the notes on the school. There was little we could do with them because the school was still paying their debts on time.

Food was brought from the faculty cafeteria for our noon meal but we had no idea how good it was compared to what the students would have. We were not egalitarians simply because we knew that some people needed perks.

Our limo was waiting outside when we exited the admin building. Dean Addams was going to drive her own car so she would not have to rely on us for a ride back.

Ellen said, "Addams will try to side with us as far as the problem areas in the school go but she will not go too far yet."

Herb said, "I would do the same. Some of the new pack members found that Janet Cullis' has her own problems with money. The school has been in family hands for a hundred and seventeen years and she would like it to stay there but it won't. Her three sons would sell the place if they could. She was thinking of setting up a corporation where family cannot touch it."

Kim said, "I didn't hear why Cullis happens to be in financial trouble."

Herb said, "She backed her youngest grandson in a venture. It failed no matter how much money she pumped into it. The grandson was one of those anonymous backers that were helping to finance the mob's purchase of drugs. When everything fell apart the police went after documents and found enough to get the young man arrested. The legitimate portion of the business failed simply because the man running it was under the influence of drugs or just plain inept."

When we got to the Cullis estate, we found it looked much like the one we owned in Montreal but without all the land. Dean Addams followed behind us and had taken the opportunity to inform Cullis what she had learned at her meeting with us. She told the truth and tried to come across as a neutral.

Janet Cullis was a woman about Ellen's age. She moved about purposely still and I admired her for her zest for life.

There were four board members and one of them was Janet's sons. The son did not want the school sold unless he could get a piece of the action. Then again, the board of directors wanted the same thing. We had hardly got started when another son and board member arrived to look out for his portion of his inheritance.

Ellen was our chief spokesman and the chief executive officer of the corporation. She came across as a strong willed woman that was a lady first and foremost. The Cullis tradition had it that women should be boss. The daughters were given husbands found by their mothers so as to perpetuate their matriarchal position.

Janet also sat back and let the two women and one male directors argue for her while she appeared as if she were neutral. She followed all the details mentioned very carefully.

Ellen said, "I want it known, and it would go into any agreement, that the property will remain a school. We will even go so far as to alter its charter so that it cannot be used in any other way."

Others had come to buy the troubled school but it was worth far less as just real estate and a few large buildings. For us the best time to buy was when the school was ready to fall apart and the faculty about to leave.

Janet said, "That takes a burden off my shoulders. My family has invested too much of their blood and money into the school over the years to let the school fail."

Ellen said, "It is failing though. Its accreditation is in jeopardy and if it fails the school will stop being a place of teaching."

The two sons were both wealthy but always wanted more. When they could they talked of how much the school meant to the family and then how valuable it was. Their mother was angry at them because she figured we could see through their subterfuge.

As Ellen spoke, the rest of us dug deep into the minds of those around us. They were all human which meant that they were far from lily white. That did not make them bad people though. Each of them were guilty of siphoning off some of the school money into their own pockets.

Our offer was finally tabled but only after we tabulated all the assets and the debts so that the parties could argue on various points. We left later with no contract but we had made headway. Part of this was the way Ellen sided with many charities that Janet supported. The conclusion of the sale, if it happened at all would be months if not years away.

We spent the rest of the week monitoring the Attorney General's office and its employees. Nicolas provided us with a list of employees and we made reports while they were at their office or at home. There was a lot of deadwood and ones that had sold data on occasion but this did not happen much.

In the mean time we purchased furniture for the farm and called to bring the dogs from Toronto. They missed us and we felt the same way.

We registered in two colleges that were affiliated with the University of Ottawa or Carlton University. They had two mini summer courses that would allow us to take care of the basic general education courses. Testing out took some preparation but the exams were not hard.

Security measures were taken but contractors were not used to install the devices. Some of the students arrived and helped us get settled. There were now thirty seven pack members, eighty four students slated to ascend and two hundred and twenty seven students that were not suited to gain what we had. So far, none of them had let our secret escape. Part of it was because we placed stronger compulsions on those that were weak.

Jack and Marcel phoned on occasion for some help and we sent some old hands, like Bobby and Joy, their way along with some of the new pack members. Joseph and Pete did the same thing.

Tiffany, her daughter Megan, Amber and four of the new pack members left to take up residence in Toronto and try to get into the University of Toronto. We needed pack there to keep all of us safe. There was a lot of crying because Megan saw the children as her brothers and sisters. I hurt too because deep inside she was my daughter too.

We were working on the Department of Defence. There were spies here too but I was not too concerned. One country had to monitor another country to find threats. Canada was not so stupid as to not do the same thing. What we did find was the same as in other organisations. Getting rid of the deadwood was going to be hard.

We were still negotiating for the school and the condo building. Ellen upped the ante for the school by showing drawings of the new buildings that had to be erected. Ellen promised to put a stipulation in the contract that the buildings be erected in the next ten years or a penalty clause would kick in.

The woman was still not willing to sell. There was still hope that the school could weather the storm. She knew that she had to succeed or lose the school through one means or another. The time when the decision had to be made was still at least a year away and it all depended on if the latest attempt to lure new students was successful or not.

Through Janet Cullis, we were invited to a party that was mostly composed of Humane Society members.

Herb told the woman, "I don't think I can make it but my son might. He loves dogs and they simply love him. Some of them are probably more intelligent than some of the guests."

"I'd love to see your son and his dogs. What makes them so special?"

"The have a large repertoire of tricks but it's because they learn so fast that they are special. It takes only a short time for them to learn new skills. Sometimes I think they understand us so well that they mock us."

Herb went on to talking about some of the things Baron or the other dogs had done.

"You should bring them to the party. It's not held in town but on a hobby farm."

We ended up going to the party without any illusions. Herb was his own son, Matt and we all had new names. The dogs were well behaved and all of them could read minds, now that it was safe to give them the form of Abicore that was not dangerous.

Baron even had a date. Her name was Baroness. She was young and not a purebred so she would not have the faults that accompanied inbreeding. They responded to voice commands very well but preferred the mental images we sent them because the orders were so much clearer.

We met a lot of nice people and a lot of nuts. They saw pets as child substitutes. The dogs did not like to be handled by non-pack members but took the abuse stoically.

Janet had introduced us after she found our new identities. She was very taken with the dogs and us. I was back to being a sixteen-year-old girl and Kim was my sister of eighteen. Herb as Matt was our brother and Ellen was our aunt. She looked young enough to fit in easily. In fact she looked very young because she was now pregnant.

Herb asked Baron to follow Janet's orders after doing a test. Dogs could not see red and green so they were partially colour blind. They see yellow, white, blue, brown and black. Their world is brighter and less detailed than what a human would see.

Janet asked Baron to fetch various coloured objects and he did as he was asked. The rest of the dogs sat and watched. His memory was tested by getting more than one order. Numbers of objects fetched were stipulated and Baron did fairly well. Mathematics was not his strong point.

A slate was brought out and the dogs wrote their names and some mathematics we dictated to them using large pieces of chalk. We would use a whiteboard but the solvents in the markers were objectionable to the dogs.

Janet was only one of those that were stunned by what she saw. "This is utterly amazing. How did you do it?"

Herb said, "Careful breeding of the best dogs possible. Our bloodlines do not match any kennel club. We strive for intelligence though all of them look good."

Ellen was presently preoccupied as she was for the last few months. She loved her four boys and they loved her even though she was a woman. Ellen's periods were encouraged to start again and all of us monitored the situation. With our healing power, she released four eggs.

It was a documented fact that some women with multiple sexual partners had released two eggs though usually days apart. One was fertilised by one partner and one by another. This was easy to prove when the twins were born with one having black skin and the other white. DNA tests proved that the babies had different fathers. This time there were four fathers and Ellen was going to have quadruplets.

With our powers of healing, she was not worried about herself or her babies. Many older women that had undergone fertility treatments had twins or better. The trouble would be when Ellen returned home and presented her new family to her old one.

When we ate, so did the dogs. This time they ate steak but consumed it in small portions as if they wanted to talk to each other. The fact was that this was true. Baron was the biggest but it was Sparky that was the alpha male. This was solely do to his mind and then his gender. Turbo was his main mate but Sniffer and Dancer almost got equal billing. Baroness was not put out to be the lowest on the totem pole because she was the mate of the second male.

Ellen's condition did not show. When the music started so did she. We were all asked to dance but it wasn't until we danced with Herb, did the males learn how well all of us could move. From then on the males were a little intimidated but not the women. They flocked to Herb and he did the best he could with them. Janet got a dance and she blushed at first, then very excited for the rest of the night.

When we left that night, I was sure we would be invited to more parties. Many women loved Herb but also wanted to play matchmaker with their young relatives.

Ellen said on the way home, "It looks like Herb had a lot of fun. I hope the ladies didn't tire him out too much?"

Herb was not fatigued much and said, "I've got lots of stamina left to make my wives happy — at least for a while."

We laughed at this and I hugged him. "We're not too aggressive, are we?"

Herb took an arm off the steering wheel and held me. "I can perform better than most men alive. Those men would die happy trying to equal me. No matter what you call on me to do, I will consider myself the luckiest man on this or any other planet."

We saw images of Kim and I then Melissa. We all had our babies. It was not just sex though that was part of it. Love held us together and we had one very happy man.

Ottawa did not have the excitement of Montreal or Toronto. It didn't have the crime either. We gathered evidence on the underworld and they were blissfully unaware of what we were doing.

We found people that needed help. Many were runaways that were forced into prostitution. If they were young and not suited for the pack, then their parents and the Children's aid were notified. This was done in a different way than usual so that Marcel and Jake did not know what city we were in.

There were sick individuals that had to be cured and now we were doing even more as our numbers had risen. Possible students trickled in and we assessed them. A few could potentially make it to the pack and some could be helped but had to stay as students and then support staff. Most had to be directed to some charities that we were funding. Many times this was not enough and they went back to the streets. Drugs were our chief enemy and all the people were given a compulsion to stay away from this.

The condos became ours and the crews were increased many times to get the work done. Work had to be redone to install the fibre optics and cable for the security system.

The farm was beautiful but had to have large tents to house some of the students that rotated through or ones that we found in this city. Most of our students were young and it was fairly easy to find a teaching staff. Some were older though and needed what only a university could offer.

The pack was a different matter. We were all very bright and very focussed. When we wanted to learn something different, we found somebody who knew a lot and then we read his or her mind. With enough samples taken, we condensed the information and anybody that wanted it could go to who was storing it.

All of the original pack members were great research chemists. Sheila Knox was one of the best and we got what she had. Colins was no slouch and had some data to add. Over the last few years, we found others to add to this but outside of organic or biological chemistry.

Individually we were very bright, but it was when we were linked mentally that we were simply awesome. It was as if each of us were a brain cell and as we grew, so did out understanding of the world around us.

We sort of specialised in science. The topic was very wide and we endeavoured to fill in the gaps. Our goal was to learn how we were different from the normals. Our research gave us how our minds and even our cells had changed but we did not know how we could do what we did.

The attack on this problem was also pursued from the other end by finding out what happened when we sent out a thought or when we hovered over the floor. We were constructing one or more new branches of science and had to be careful. Going down a blind alley would hamper our finding the truth because we knew that understanding would take many decades at least.

We could block thought with gold, aluminum and iron particles. We found more after our first successes. Finding something that reacted to counter-gravity was a different matter.

Some compounds acted oddly but none of them did this strongly. Finding out why any of this happened at all was pursued diligently.

The lab in Toronto had a lot of bad memories but we had some good ones too when working to find how our brains worked. We had lots of research that far superceded what anybody knew before about the mind. We had found a lot more about Downs Syndrome because one of these studies lead to what we now were.

Another of our studies found many if not all the links to schizophrenia. Apparently the malady was linked to some very powerful proteins manufactured in the brain. Only a few molecules were necessary for the effects to be manifested. Up to this time only two had been found by other researchers.

We worked with the Jamieson Clinic to do most of our work. We just supplied the direction and they worked diligently to perform the studies. We were now working on formulating one possible drug to work on one of the methods that schizophrenia was manifested. The protein we called softren-b attached itself to the nerve cell and blocked its function. Our protein attacked softren-b and split it in two. Those portions stayed in place to keep other proteins from attaching themselves and were themselves now innocuous.

Only 9% of the schizophrenia patients suffered from this form of the disease but once we segregated these, we were 93% successful in curing the disease. The trick was in finding those individuals. Since this related to school, we worked to find tests that any laboratory could use to find those individuals we could help.

The Jamieson Clinic was doing other work for us too. I worked in the microbiology field and tried to formulate a virus to clean human DNA or to repair portions of it relating to defects. One virus could only work on a few sites and we tried to make sure they were very selective. If we made a mistake, we could harm our entire race.

If one person had done either of these two studies, they would get a Nobel Prize in Medicine. We could not claim the prize or even account for how we found this information. We used our talents on the brains of some of the sick individuals. None of which were harmed in the process. We took samples of blood and spinal fluid only. The Jamieson Clinic did almost all the hands on work.

They were qualified researchers and were used as a front for us. To do research more efficient and quicker, we would have to take charge directly. The best course would be to go to the clinic and work through them there but we could not get our diplomas and recognition this way.

If we were able to get Apex University then we could expand on our research and do it much more openly. One small clinic being a sudden world leader was no good and neither was one small private university.

I said to Kim and Melissa, "We have to see how many semesters we can skip in university. I hope you have made your choices about what to do?"

Kim said, "I don't like leaving the children even if we are close. Then there are all the crooks we have to find and then send to jail?"

Melissa was three years older than Kim at twenty one. She said, "I want to be near the kids but I think I can function."

"We have hundreds of babysitters and even their father on occasion. The pack can continue to help children and find crooks. We are going to do a lot more help if we can do this without subterfuge. Some of us are going to have to go into politics."

Kim saw the inevitability of my words and spoke quickly, "I'll still take medicine and go into psychiatry." I could feel her hate for politicians. Melissa was almost as quick. She hated politicians too.

I said, "We are going to have to do this. Perhaps all of us will have to do both jobs. The person credited with a discovery that improves people's lives stands a better chance of being voted in."

"How long until we start to make a difference?"

"People are very similar to sheep that are both deaf and blind. There are so many of them that we have to push some to get others to move then they push more. This I'm afraid is a lifetime commitment just like it is when we joined the pack."

Herb hid his disappointment deeply about our going to school. He wanted us to stay together. If he was going to be a simple MD then this would make three medical doctors in our family. I said, "We can still take courses together. You always wanted to be a doctor and now is your chance. Most of us will be taking the same courses as you do."

"I want to be with my family. We work so well as a team. If we go to school, we are going to have to do homework and assignments that are far beneath us. This takes away from our time together. I love being a father and a husband. I don't have to be a doctor."

"Herb, ask Melissa and Kim if they want you to be a doctor."

Before he could ask, Melissa and Kim pushed their reply and I added mine. He reluctantly said, "I'll do this if you want but a doctor has a limited amount of free time. I will be further ahead of you guys and you are going to have to study for years longer to get your speciality."

I said, "I know that but Nicolas and I spoke of trends. The pack would grow and become more committed every day. You would be no different."

Herb was not that displeased. He was part of the pack and saw the necessity. Our portion of the pack drew him more than the rest. He was encumbered with the culture we grew up in but didn't really fit.

The University of Ottawa had a mini summer session too and we were in time to register for it. It had been easy to do the college tests but the marks were not believed. With four of us applying this way then they would be even more cautious.

We each gave an explanation that we studied under the care of our guardian and then worked for the Jamieson Clinic as researchers. We now wanted to get some paper recognition from a qualified university.

The University of Ottawa got our subfamily's paperwork. Carlton University was not far away and got Nicolas, Ellen and Anthony. With our marks, I figured we would be assured of a few tests before we were even placed. Our aim was to test out in the first two years and use the short summer session to test out in the third year.

In the course of the next month, we did some work for the RCMP. They had stumbled on more of the information we laid out for them and they were more than happy to use us. We did not make it too easy for them and just pointed them at what to look for so they could make up their own minds.

Defence lawyers tried to have us called to testify when they got word that a group such as ours was digging up dirt. Since we didn't make too many official accusations, there was no reason to go even if we wanted to. The courts did not see the need even if we existed because the Crown Attorneys always stated that the information was gathered in-house.

Brandon's and Tiffany's teams did a good job of getting the mid to lower order criminals arrested. A lot of the young criminals were also caught. In some cases the ones that were easier to convert were given a nudge to get a job and go to school when it started in the fall.

Very few criminals were singled out by us because that would mean that the RCMP would know where we were. To give some redirection, we headed for Halifax and gathered what we could.

During this time I had to report to the university to be assessed. Credit by examination was a low cost option that I wished to pursue. I could take all but the basic education examinations and if I passed them, I would get credit. The basic ed courses were already in the bag because we tested out of them in the colleges that Ottawa U had a reciprocal agreements with. Seeing if the university would go along with all our manipulations was a different matter.

I went to the administration building with a note to see Mrs Jackson. When I knocked on her open door, I found five people there waiting for me.

I walked in since the door was open and said, "Hello. I'm Piper Compton. It looks like I'm expected."

One man of almost sixty spoke first and said, "What makes you think that, young lady?"

"My appointment was for both here and now. I find five people fixedly staring at me. They seem much more interested than what the usual professor or psychiatrist would."

"Why do you say, psychiatrist?" He was fishing for more data to analyse me. I knew who he was from a few sources and I did not have to read his mind to confirm it. Not doing so was foolish and it only confirmed my assumption.

I had to smile as I said, "I know that I have a high IQ and also somebody that would be interesting to those that do the testing. I'm here to let you know that there were no mistakes in my IQ. Then I have to have some exams to assess my knowledge. The school will then try to place me where I belong. I just put myself in the university's place."

He figured that he was found out and asked, "Where is your place?"

"Let's go through the tests so you will not think my requests unreasonable."

"You're not suffering from an overactive sense of modesty."

I had to smile. "I like you Dr Sanborn. You come in dressed to fit in with the professors and handle all the questioning so far. I have enough smarts to know that I will do very well. I have no need to act like the typical young woman of my age. If I want something I have to go for it, not wait for it to drop into my lap. Life is too precious to sit and smell the flowers from morning to night."

"It seems you know me. How is that?"

"You ask far more than your share of the questions." I got a smile from him. "It makes sense that one of the psychiatrists the school calls on would meet me. While you were preparing to investigate me I was already investigating you and your colleagues."

This surprised the man and he said, "And who else is with us?"

I did not have to cheat much because the people present would like to see who they would teach. I walked over to Mrs Jackson and extended my hand. "Mrs Jackson I presume?"

"Yes, I am. How did you know."

"School photos, in fact all of you are in the books."

"I should have guessed. It's just that few people would take the time to do this."

I went to the rest and introduced myself and finally went to Mr Sanborn. After shaking hands I said, "I have a photographic memory. That should put a small amount of your doubts to rest."

Mr Sanborn said, "Is your sister Kimberly applying to enter this school?"

"Yes she is. You'll find her easier to get along with but not much. She has a photographic memory too."

"Any more in your family have that?"

"One more related by blood."

"Who might that be?"

"Why my son Stan. He's only at grade three level now so you have some breathing room."

"Grade three? He's eight? Your records say you've just turned seventeen."

"I'm sorry Dr Sanborn but you made a faulty assumption. He's eleven months old. By the time he's five or six, he'll be knocking on your door wanting to take classes."

"Eleven months! Grade three? How can this be?"

"Good genes, Doc. I'd bring Stan in but he knows how to wrap people around his fingers. I'd never get tested."

We got started and I did six IQ tests in a row. Four of them I had taken before so I went slower on purpose.

While those tests were being marked, I wrote exams in the courses I wanted to take. They got steadily harder as they went on but they were still child's play. I didn't have to cheat on anything and I would feel bad if I had to.

The testing lasted for seven days. More people had to be called in because Kim and then Melissa had to be tested. Herb came right after. Dr Sanborn was allowed to babysit our three children as long as he stayed in the same room with us. It was comical for two eleven month-old children to speak proper English to the doctor and then ask him questions in psychiatry. Jordan was paying attention to everything but thankfully not projecting either his voice or his mind.

When the tests were done, I said to Dr Sanborn, "We're going over to Carlton University to do some tests."

He looked worried. "You are almost assured of a place here, Piper."

"Thank you but you see my time is important. This school will be hesitant to give me even a fraction of what I want. The other school may do better. If there's problems we can go south of the border. I'll have no trouble getting in, it's just where in the system I'm placed that matters. You have little room to move on just marks so I have to have our inventions evaluated. Here you can be justified in placing us where we want."

He was nervous now and said quietly, "Where would you like to be placed?"

"I could pass enough tests to get my bachelors of science degree today. I have been working on my doctoral thesis for over a year. I've spent a lot of time in my own lab and some of those in the Jamieson Clinic. I'll accept the last year with a major in honours Biochemistry and another in honours Pharmacology. My family will take the same position but their majors will be what they choose. They are going to be medical doctors and at least two will go on to be specialists. I'm sorry but I have to be firm on these demands."

"You never went to university before. You never even went to high school. How can you expect to skip all those years of learning?"

"Are you being rhetorical or would you like an answer?"

"I guess I was partially rhetorical but I would still like to know."

"I'm a very determined person. For the last six years, I was not sitting on my butt watching television but studying with a world renowned biochemist. I stated that my time was spent in the lab and with a computer doing research that was far more difficult than what a simple Bachelor of Science degree would warrant.

"In the next few years, there are going to be some very startling discoveries made public. I have not finished all of our research but it should be complete soon. I want to present these discoveries myself and that means I have to have a silly piece of paper. People will not take me seriously without it."

"What are these discoveries about?"

"My family and I have found what we believe to be all seven of the causes of schizophrenia. A small accomplishment but good for a start."

Dr Sanborn thought I was full of shit but did not say so. He just looked at me and I discussed medicine with him. He well knew what schizophrenia was and I explained enough of an overview then went deep in three areas to explain far more than he or any researcher knew about this disease.

"There are four more causes which I have not mentioned yet. I am in the process of patenting a drug we develop that cures the people that suffer from one form of this disease. Your university has a chance to share in my accomplishments. They can claim that they helped train me and I will play my part by agreeing with them."

"Can you prove the claims you have already made to me?"

"I have the lab reports and they are all notarised. I can redo the tests and it should take three weeks in the lab after we winnow out the ones we can help with a test we developed. You will see how we arrive at our deductions. You have to keep the specifics of the proof secret. If we meet your expectations we expect you to go to bat for us with the Dean."

"I can do that with a good conscience if what you say is true."

"Thanks Dr Sanborn. Your name and that of the Jamieson Clinic will have to go on the work but I don't see a problem with that."

"Neither do I, Piper."

While I waited, a large file was sent to Jack's computer with all we found out about bad politicians. In the last two months, five highly placed and quite important politicians decided to suddenly retire. They were too far up the food chain for Jack to tackle so we presented the individuals with enough evidence to convict them and then threatened to go public. Two were acting ministers and this shook up the government. The government would have to scramble to find people to put in by-elections to fill the vacancies while two backbenchers moved to the front.

Ottawa was all abuzz because there was a mad scramble to find the people that were rocking the boat. Jack was already here because he was called to investigate. He already suspected we had done it and so did the RCMP and the politicians.

My phone rang and after looking at the code that came up, I said, "Hello, Jack, how are you?"

"Never mind me, what did you do?"

"I did what you could not do. I am not naive. You would be forced to stop any investigation or to hold off to at least the next election. The taxpayers got off good here. No expensive court cases and the government was not embarrassed."

"What you did was illegal."

"Jack, now you are acting naive or possibly idealistic. There are three more politicians we have not put in our reports." I gave him the names and the evidence we had on them. "Now you ask your bosses if I go public or let them retire."

"You can't do that. It's illegal as hell."

"They were the ones abusing the trust given them. I just have a bigger stick than you can manage. Now are you going to talk to your bosses or not?"

"I'll do it but I don't like it."

Nicolas said, "They are trying very hard to trace this call. They probably have an army of people doing it."

"Do you want me to disconnect?"

"I'm able to keep a few steps ahead of them."

"Good, You're the best." I got a small blush sent back even though I could not see it.

I said to Jack, "They're really trying to trace this call."

"How do you know?"

"I just told you, I'm not naive. Because of the bad faith shown, I'm forced to go public with what The Honourable Clive Hutchinson has been doing in the last twenty three years."

"Stop! Don't do that. Give me a chance."

"I'm not angry at you Jack. Your bosses wanted to compromise your word and now they are going to suffer. I'm not foolish enough to send this to only the Canadian papers. Your bosses will not be able to stop this story because it will be broadcast on the BBC and American TV once they get their own data."

"Why did you do this? We were working so well together."

"We were as long as we took out criminals with little political clout. Our government is just as corrupt as any other developed country. All of them are far from white and to tell the truth we do not want politicians that act like Dudley Do-Right. On the other hand, we don't want those that are out for money and power at the expense of all our morals."

"We could have got him to quit."

"He would just have switched horses and become a lobbyist but never quit."

"That's not bad."

"True but he's corrupt and would stay that way. Now, since you have a good portion of the RCMP, the CSIS monitoring this call then you have eight hours to get back to me and tell me what the government wants to do with the last two."

Jack did not answer right away and so I said, "We will still be around to receive the call."

"I figured you would."

"Thanks for your vote of confidence now you have a new file in your computer. We have to move on. Those lawyers in the Maritimes need to swill at the trough the way so many politicians do."

"What do you mean?"

"Now you are flustered and not thinking right. Those people on the line are not going to find me Jack. Read the file and do your duty to your country. And to the rest of you guys and gals listening, I don't mind you trying your hand at finding me but leave Jack to do his job. You may get orders from up the pipe to rattle my cage. I promise to rattle your bosses back along with accumulated interest. I want my country clean or as clean as we can make it while still functioning."

Jack got the file for Halifax. This should get him off our scent for a while. The press got packets and they were all over the government looking for access to certain documents. The press packs particularly said that the government would stall as long as they could.

To keep the scent of blood in the water for the reporters, I gave them additional data on the politicians that the police were currently investigating. The government was pulling out all the stops in trying to find us. This was dangerous but far less dangerous than if they thought we were espers.

Nicolas did some tricks to lead the police to the Maritimes. The wasps would still be buzzing around here when their nest was kicked. Staying low sounded like a good idea but we also had to hit another city to let people know we were moving on.

When we were in Toronto, we had gathered much more data than we could use. Tiffany was trying to go to school just like we were but was also looking to further our list of criminal and their activities. This list would go to Jack soon.

The younger members of the pack were more or less free to do as they wished. They would not fit into life in the university as well yet and I still worried about them like a mother hen. The remainder of the pack were planning trips that would find them digging in any city they wished to go to. There were enough responsible people to lead the group or to lead a portion of it.

Two groups got on planes and flew to smaller cities in the west. This month long trip would see them charter a bus to larger cities and set up a base of operation. We owned a lot of property and it made sense to see it used and improved. Seeing them go almost ripped out my heart but they needed to grow without my apron strings holding them up.

The youngest or the ones that had not developed a strong character yet stayed with us. They numbered seventeen with ten of them boys. These members were growing strong but also needed somebody near, like a child learning to ride a bike needed his parent. In a year or so the majority would be able to stand alone.

Nicolas, Ellen and Anthony had eight with five being male. The groups were not set because they rotated all the time. Each one of the original pack members had strengths and weaknesses but morally we were all strong. From the point of view of the rest of the world, we were far from their conception of just. The developed countries looked down on graft and corruption while the other countries saw this as a way of life.

The only groups of people that hated what we did were the criminals and a small portion of the immigrants that came here. The latter tried to bring the lawlessness of their country to Canada. They were used to getting their way through intimidation and used some of their old customs in a new country.

People were not going to change just because they stepped off a plane in a new land. Nor were our own homegrown criminals that figured that they could get what they wanted because the laws were weak. From my standpoint, they were weak because it was difficult to catch a criminal and convict him. They were just children of every age that thought they could get away with being naughty when their parents' heads were turned.

Carlton was not approached on Mr Sanborn's recommendation. This came about when he got four edited and different reports from the Jamieson Clinic. The results could have been faked but he was going to be in on a new study and there would be no faking there.

Mr Derrick Sanborn approached the medical faculty with the paperwork and they seemed interested. Our report showed how the molecules composing the neurons in a schizophrenics mind were coat with receptors. This was old hat to everybody. The pack had found that the powerful protein softren-b attached itself to some of these receptors.

We showed in many ways the composition of the protein. We showed how softren-b deadened some areas of the brain and brought on one form of the disease.

Another report listed the procedure we used to separate the various types of schizophrenia. We listed four more types of the disease than what the medical community knew about. This would distance us from the rest of the study but it was better to be honest at the start.

Giardiniere-49, our pseudo protein. A virus was an infective agent that usually consisted of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat. The coat in this case was what we were after. The giardiniere-49 slipped through the bloodstream and actually made its way into the spinal fluid and then reached the brain. The virus was very selective and could only attach itself to softren-b to replicate. So far we had not found any other molecules but this may change when every widening tests were made.

We had constructed life, if you considered a virus to be alive. We were also very conscious of the possibility of this virus doing harm or a variant strain that would hurt mankind. The technology we made to develop the virus was original and a deeply held secret. I knew that I could not have developed this if my life depended upon it but the pack as a whole could. Understanding the processes was just as difficult.

We had expanded on human DNA and found many more sites that had corresponding attributes in our bodies. There was much more that was simply garbage put in there by various types of virus over the last few million years. This sort of information was very valuable to mankind but it could also be used for ill. We would have to portion out some of our knowledge but then monitor humanity for somebody misusing it. This monitoring would have to continue as long as the pack or our descendants existed.

Mr Sanborn introduced the four of us to Dr Jacques Robillard. He was the Dean of Medicine at the university. We read his mind avidly. He had heard a lot about us but equated age with intelligence and responsibility.

He shook our hands but it was to Herb he said, "You have a very impressive group here Mr Stewart. You hit the school like a German blitzkrieg."

"The group as you call it is more impressive than the individual units. Each of us are pursuing medicine in various ways so we cover a wider area. It's not much different than a team of specialists working in a lab to do research."

"Do you consider yourselves experts?" The man did not like uppity students.

Herb smiled and said, "Let's have facts speak, shall we. I can see you don't like people boasting."

Robillard had to pause then took a different tack. "You have some impressive reports but there is still a lot missing."

"Those parts were intentionally edited out."

"Really? Why?"

"I agree that knowledge should not be hoarded but we are also business people. Patents have been applied for but are not secured yet. You can check on what claims we have made at the various patent offices. The manufacturing methods for giardiniere-49 are a closely held family secret."

"How did you find the protein, softren-b?"

We knew this was going to be asked along with a great many more questions so Herb gave our canned answer. The explanation lasted ten minutes.

The next question was about giardiniere-49 and Herb said, "Kim should answer this because she had more to do with it."

Robillard expected Kim to act worried in his presence but was disappointed. Kim used her computer and made a presentation that was a half hour long. The fact we could deduce were in the reports but Kim qualified additional remarks with 'we think'.

Robillard was quiet as he thought on what was said and I spoke to Mr Sanborn. "We have been working on various haploid sets and located additional points that are linked to various multifactorial and polygenic disorders. We are willing to publish the results of each of the six completely new cases we found."

"What specifically did you find?"

I listed the six diseases and where the defects were on the human chromosomes. "The knowledge I imparted is to show we are serious about learning. The Canadian Medical Association Journal and the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry are going over this group of six articles and the third one should be published any day."

"You have already published?"

"This is our tenth research document that has gone to press." He didn't know that the pack as a whole had published fifty three articles so far. We were only keeping up our end.

Robillard used his computer to access the online journals and I knew he was typing in our names. There were only a few hits but that was because we did not always post in the same publication.

Melissa was asked by me to put her two cents in and spoke during the lull in conversation. "Our team found a novel way of fabricating proteins to our specifications."

Sanborn and Robillard were very interested now. She went on and described much of our system but she only homed in on one of the steps and talked in detail. Her presentation lasted for two hours because of the questions asked. Her replies were concise but still covered everything asked.

Kim and Herb were asked more questions but I was avoided but I didn't mind. Finally Herb said, "Let's eat and we can talk as we digest something?"

Robillard looked at his watch and was amazed at how much time had passed. "I think that's a good idea. I was supposed to be asked if I would release a lab for your use to justify your claims. Tell me what you need?"

He was looking at Herb and he pointed to me. I said, "The lab needn't be provided. We will bring the giardiniere-49 as well as our tests. You have to find enough schizophrenic patients that wish to be tested. We found only 9% that had the type of disease we can treat. You can administer the doses and assess the results. Conversely you can do the tests at mental hospitals. Segregation is not an issue. I think this particular test should be done completely by the university. You get to refute or confirm what we've claimed."

Herb had to get everybody up and moving. We talked as we walked to the cafeteria. There were a lot of earnest doctors to be watching us as we ate with the Dean. I stated how much of the giardiniere-49 I was going to give and how many of the test kits. The same kits would also be used later to show that the softren-b was destroyed.

In many cases a professor took the kudos for what his students developed. The professor also put his reputation on the line by backing the assertions he made. This time the university would handle all of the details. We would be excluded apart from providing the materials and checking the reports as they were made. At the completion of the study, we would get at least equal billing.

Three days later we were enrolled in the third year of the Bachelor of Science course. We immediately challenged as the university knew we would and began to do tests once more.

Purolator delivered the test kits and we signed a contract. Some facts had to be kept secret and were stipulated in the contract. Jamieson Clinic had lots of contracts to do testing and so did the university.

It was later when we got our class schedules that I found we had to take P.E. or participate in a sport for our third year. I had not counted on this but I did know that we had to put in some community service so we could get this year out of the way. The same would hold true for our forth year.

Sanborn came around to the office when we picked up our schedules. He was polite and asked Herb, "Where are you people going to live?" Inside he was chuckling that we got hit with the sports.

I was not angry at this at all but it was inconvenient. We exercised when we could and it was usually to clear the toxins from our blood after thinking so hard or so long.

Herb said to him, "We bought a home near the school. We have the contractors gutting it now."

Sanborn knew there was no cheap homes near the school. Home prices had appreciated greatly in the last few years. The thoughts of gutting a home on top of the purchase made him think we were wealthy because he did not think we were stupid or foolish.

"I'd love to visit some day."

Kim did not like to be forced to take a sport and said, "You going to babysit?"

Lights went on in his mind and he said, "I certainly would."

Melissa said, "You can talk to the kids and try to educate them. You can even play games and try to find out how smart they are but if you push them you will make four very bad enemies."

"I would do nothing to harm the children. I find them delightful to be with. I may even be around one day when they enter this university. They may even make fewer waves than their mothers and father."

Melissa smiled sweetly and said, "I did not tell you who the father was. I don't think Kim or Piper told anybody who the father of their children are. I don't think your little fishing expedition did you much good."

Sanborn knew he was caught but he was slippery. "Forgive me for making the assumption. The children do have more than a passing likeness to Herb. You have to admit that Herb watches over the children just like a father and he looks at each of you in a special way."

Herb had his smile now and he said, "I would like to claim that I was the father of all three but I can't."

Sanborn had not listened well to Herb's words and said, "That is too bad. The fathers of the children should be encouraged to meet more bright young ladies."

"You would want unwed mothers?"

"I think those children would be very well taken care of. They would be something like yours. They would have the best caregivers imaginable. That way they could learn even more."

"Government assistance was never that good."

"Private funds would do this. Perhaps the university could start a nursery school."

Kim said, "It's not likely. The kids would be running it in a year."

"I would love to see that."

"You may not be able to bend that far. Old people, like those over thirty, don't change much. You have to be young to do that."

"I understand that Hugh is 31."

"I'm not going to take back my words. Hugh has a hard time doing a mile in under four minutes. We can do it much better."

Sanborn was amazed, "The record for a mile was not much less than four minutes and a woman has not broken that record in any recorded event."

"We don't run at events, only for fun."

"What can you do?"

"Let's go to a track and find out."

I said, "Kim, what are you doing? We are trying to remain under their radar after we got the classes we wanted?"



"He made me angry. He wasn't planning on it and I guess neither was I."

"You better not be looking too good."

"I'll do four minutes and no less."

"After what you said, I guess that is the best we can do."



We walked a considerable distance with Dr Sanborn. He grilled us on our physical ability but we claimed to not want to brag and then not be able to deliver. He always had lots of questions for us on every topic imaginable.

At the sports centre, he quickly introduced us to a woman coach by the name of Angie Ball. Dr Sanborn said to her, "Kimberly said that she usually can beat the four minute mile. Herb, does too but he's usually slow."

Angie said, "What can you do?"

Kim said, "We have to run not talk. It all had to do with this meanie giving us P.E. or a sport. We exercise all the time."

"I believe you. All of you look very fit. Are you going to run then?"

"We can but we'd like access to the shower after and some dry towels if you have any."

"I have enough but I don't have any shorts. You can't run far in those jeans."

"We'll manage but we'll then have to go and change."

Melissa saw Angie looking at her breasts. Melissa looked back and Angie did not blush. "I just had a baby and I'm still nursing."

"You don't have to run."

"We are a unit. You could almost call us a family. We do everything as a group. I usually run and exercise with others."

"Then you are most welcome to try."

We were led to the track. All of us did some warmups and then ran for short bursts to bet the blood flowing.

When we stood near Angie, she said, "You guys ready?"

I was the spokesperson now and said, "Sure!"

Angie brought out her stopwatch and said, "On your mark —"

When she said "Go!" we burst forward. It took us only a short time to set our pace and then we kept it. I monitored our speed so we would not be too fast or too slow. Kim had Melissa and I start to lag and then we pretended to be chasing Herb. He put on a burst of speed but then slowed as if deathly afraid of being caught. We thought this better than having him chasing us. I was still only seventeen and we had to abide by some legalities.

When we came by Angie, she pushed the button on the watch. Dr Sanborn looked at the instrument to see what our time was.

Angie said, "You people amaze me."

I said, "How is that?"

"People running the mile are exhausted when the finish. They put everything they have into running. You four have poor clothes to wear for running. Your shoes are not made for this task and when you come in at four minutes, you are not even breathing hard. I know for a fact that you were holding back. Why did you do it? None of the women runners have run as fast as you have. You could be world champions."

We had fucked up and I had to say, "We are all very bright. To get what we want, we have to show this. All of us train diligently. We compete against each other."

"That doesn't explain how good each of you are."

"Have you watched tapes of old football games?"

Angie caught on right away. "Yes."

"Then you can see how the players now are faster, more agile and bigger than the best players in the past. We push ourselves the same way. In twenty years, you will see people running even faster."

"I don't know how you did it but Herb came in at a split second less then four minutes and you all came in at exactly four. You were still holding back. I don't think anybody could run faster."

Kim was the one that said, "Sure there will be. Wait until Jessica starts to run around your track."

"Who's Jessica?"

"My daughter. Stan and Jordan may beat her."

"And they are?"

"Why Piper and Melissa's sons."

"How old are they? You're still young."

"The old hands are just turning twelve months and Jordan is four months."

"How can you tell that they are going to be good at running? Babies cannot even walk that well at that age."

Dr Sanborn hurriedly said, "They are exceptional children. Stan and Jessica ask me a lot of questions about the treatment of patients. Their questions are insightful. I have to treat them like young adults. Stan had even argued with me on various forms of treatment."

Angie just stared at him. She was waiting for the smile to show that her leg was being pulled. The doctor said, "Considering their age, the children are the most intelligent people alive."

"I have to see these children."

Melissa said, "We could use more babysitters."

We talked more but then had to get in because the sun was hot. We had a quick shower and put on our clothes. Herb thought it inappropriate to come in and wash our backs.

When we emerged, Angie said, "Will you run?"

Melissa said, "We don't want to compete this way. What sports are offered?"

Angie ran through a long list and I said, "I'll teach karate not compete as both my public service and sports commitments."

Angie asked, "What belt do you have?"

"We practice among ourselves. We have never had a formal training."

"Then how do you know you know enough to teach? It takes decades to get good."

"Then you will have to see us fight and see for yourselves. This time we change first."

I used my phone to get one of the drivers to bring our clothing. Our security was good but had nothing to do other than monitor the perimeter and to drive us around. They were good at karate because we fought them all the time. They were aggressive people and fought their best. This time I called four of them so they could strut around the mat.

When we used our form of judo or karate, we wore a gi. Some times we fought naked but this was more for fun. An opponent would have clothing and it would be used to our advantage.

Angie hurriedly found some assistants and prepared where we were going to fight. There was a lot of people for her to find and many more came. I had not planned for making this much of a spectacle of ourselves. It did draw a crowd to us that we could search through for recruits.

Four of the security came as well as some that were off-duty. I made introductions and called the newcomers friends. We changed and Herb was pulled in by nine women to change. He didn't fight too hard. We emerged quickly just to keep some of the talk down.

All of us taught the students what we knew so this was nothing new. I said, "We are going to fight according to the rules in Canada concerning judo. Later we will shift to karate then our blend of both plus some moves we made ourselves."

Security were pared off and they fought aggressively. Unintentional blows were struck and blood flew until one was defeated. The two bowed to each other and left the mats.

Herb treated the injuries as the next match went on. The fighting got more and more strenuous because we had started with the weakest first. The crowd grew and they were amazed at the speed and agility.

Karate was demonstrated next and the blows really fell and blood splattered. These were professionals and they worked hard to be the best. I read the minds of those around and they were appalled at what they saw. None of them fought this way. They were all ladies and gentlemen.

Herb finally fought Melissa. They focussed on each other and traded strikes that would kill. Everybody was excited by the fighting but now they were amazed as the two went faster and faster. The fight was not choreographed in the least because we usually fought this way.

Herb and Melissa fought well but some attacks got partially through. They pulled back by agreement then bowed to each other. Both were had bled but by now their healing had stopped the flow.

Angie hurried to them and said, "Are you hurt? Can I help?"

Melissa smiled, "This was one of our laid back fights. When we go at it for real then you would see some real fighting."

Angie was amazed. "You're telling me that you were only playing?"

"Herb was pulling his strikes. He's stronger than me but I'm usually faster. That's why he got mangled just a bit more. He suffers from trying to be a gentleman while I do not have that problem."

They both looked at Herb. He stood proud as if he was wearing badges of honour. He said, "She's full of shit. I'd hurt my hand hitting her head."

Angie said, "I think your head is even harder."

When the two sat down Kim and I got up. Angie said, "Are you going to play too?"

Kim said, "My baby sister is fast so I can go for blood."

Angie was once again horrified. She looked at me and I said, "My big sister is slow as an ox. I'll try not to hurt her. We are also going to fight out style. It looks unorthodox but it gets better results."

"Don't get hurt."

"No ma'am."

We did not bow but attacked immediately. This was our style. Kim was worked up seeing Herb and Melissa fight and I was the same way. We sped up our attacks and blocks.

The peanut gallery cheered or gave suggestions like we did at home. This was not what was done here so the rest of the audience remained quiet. I was busy avoiding Kim's kicks. For an ox, she was pretty fast and I had to switch to a faster speed to keep from being hurt. I usually played a defensive strategy. If I sped up I could beat anybody and there would be no fun in that. My aim was to teach and to provide a sparing partner for those trying to excel.

I struck Kim every few seconds to make sure she stayed focussed on defence. The security detail, the pack and the students tended to only think of offence when attacking me and I had to make sure they were prepared.

Kim kept her block up most of the time so I would not know what she planned and I did the same thing. I was not always in overdrive so I got hit a few times. When I did switch over I only took a defensive role. Kim was hit a few more times but I always pulled my punches or kicks.

Kim's kicks were stronger than usual and she was doing her best. I had to speed up. Kim had caught me in the abdomen but she had sacrificed a punch to her chest to do it. It was tit for tat for a while until we heard Herb say, "You better stop now. Pull back and bow."

Kim and I dropped our blocks and saw that we had been showing a bit too much of our stuff. I said, "Disengage?"

"Yes."

We abruptly jumped back but we did not bow. We looked at each other as if our opponent were ready to attack again.

Herb and Melissa ran to us as we worked to heal ourselves. I knew I had blood on me and Kim looked the worse for wear.

Kim said, "You look like shit."

"Thank you, sister. Your not looking your best either."

Angie and Dr Sanborn had rushed to us too but Herb and Melissa were there ahead of them.

Angie said, "You almost killed each other."

It was Herb that said, "Nonsense. They were still playing. We train much more aggressively. That's why we can fight the way we do."

Dr Sanborn said, "I didn't believe my eyes. I saw karate championships and they were like children to you. There is no belt that comes close to what you can do."

Herb said, "That is what I said, it's all in the training. You play soft then you get soft competitors."

Angie said, "They could have died. That is not the way to fight."

Melissa said, "You may be a coach or a head coach but you are full of shit. You want your players to do their best. How are they going to do that if they have to set their limits so low. You may as well teach them to dance."

Angie got angry. Students did not talk to her that way but she did see that we may be right. She certainly saw the results.

I said, "Do you want us to teach? We do it our way and you get some champions."

Angie was now torn. The school was weak in karate. "You can make a championship team?"

"Not if I have to start with a pig's ear. We are going to be around a few years. Some of our friends can take a course and they can provide the nucleus of the women's team. That hunk of beefcake that watches us can start on the men's team."

Herb pretended to be angry and said, "Women are sissies. If you want them strong they have to train the way we do. That means no lines drawn because of gender. They learn kickboxing and karate."

Angie was going to object and Herb quickly said, "Are you afraid the women won't be good enough?"

She had to pause then said, "Yes."

"They stay in groups of equal abilities. There is more challenge and perhaps this will attract more participants."

I knew that Angie was going to say no so I said, "Think about it first. Ask the students if they want to try. We play hard. A little blood washes off and you can see that we make a fair team."

She did not think fair, she thought the best she had ever seen. "I'll think about it." She meant that she was not going to allow this.

Melissa called out, "Let's see a show of hands. Who would like to learn to fight the way we do?"

Angie was trapped and could not counter this. Soon forty hands went up and then later a few more. This was about a third of those that were present.

Melissa said to the crowd, "This could be coed. Guys are strong and girls are fast. We all compete. This makes us strong. Perhaps we can go to Okinawa someday and kick ass." The crowd started to be encouraged and Melissa added, "See Angie Ball and tell her what you think. Act like wallflowers and you won't get a team."

Angie was angry now and it was easy to see. She was outmanoeuvred and she knew it. She blurted out, "What happens when they get hurt?"

Melissa said, "I do not think you're a shrinking-violet when it comes to sports. We have not had one fatality yet and none of us have sought medical attention other than a few stitches. Tell me that your basketball, soccer, rugby, wrestling and hockey teams never have injuries."

We waited and Angie finally said, "Everybody gets hurt sometimes."

"Then we start slow and you watch. We get good and kick ass. Maybe we will have a team that is as good as what Carlton has in basketball." This was a sore point because the men's basketball, the Ravens, were by far the best in university ball. The people of the University of Ottawa had been kidded too much about this to let it slide. They may not make it in basketball but we could at some other events.

Some of the more forceful competitors came to talk to Angie and we stayed so she could not dismiss them out of hand. By the time we left, it looked like it was now a fifty, fifty chance.

Sanborn said after we showered and changed into clean clothes, "You manipulated her to get what you wanted."

Since he was looking at me I said, "Why are you shocked? You're a shrink. Everybody manipulates everybody else. I get the university to accept us and then try to improve on the sports programme that somebody stuck us with. If we were stuck in a job working in the kitchen we would still try to improve the conditions we worked under and still do our best."

Kim said, "I'm going to be a shrink too. It's the intent that counts when people manipulate each other. We mean no harm. We want our fellow students to do their best. We do not enter into anything unless we give it our best."

Now Sanborn had to think and then he said, "I want them to do their best too. You could help more by being on the team."

"I have no wish to compete this way. I like teaching."

"You must not want your name mentioned. Why is that?"

"That is not the reason. I'm not that shy now. We can do more to help our fellow men and women by showing them the way and guiding them the way a parent does to a child learning to ride a bike. If I go to Okinawa and get a metal then that is the same as the students watching the event on television. They have to participate. If we compete then the team would know that at best they can come in second individually."

"I'm willing to agree that you'd probably make gold in a championship event. There are other events you could compete in that the team does not. Kickboxing was mentioned."

Melissa said, "They would not be real competition."

"Do you know this for a fact?"

"We watch sports. Our reflexes are faster, have more endurance and we know where to strike to incapacitate them. They only have more strength."

"Surely there is some sport you can play in. Golf, tennis and bowling could also make you a lot of money."

He was wondering about our finances again and Melissa said, "No challenge in that."

He eventually gave up and we went around to check on where we would be spending one or more years of our time.

Across the city, Nicolas, Ellen, Anthony and eight more members of the pack as well as a few students were doing the same thing as us. They too purchased a large home near the school and were converting it. Nicolas found that he too had to take sports at Carlton and so did Ellen and the rest. They were taking math and physics and staying away from computers. If he showed his ability then the government may look too close at him.

That night we talked to all of our security people and offered them a chance to go to university. They could still do their duty but now had to work at training others in our martial arts program. They had a while to think on this and there should be a few that were interested.

We had no academic classes because of our testing out in them. Sanborn pushed hard for us to get low level coaching jobs in place of our other commitments. There were five people there already so we started right away. I looked through their minds searching for recruits. What I saw did not inspire me. They were just average students. Our own students were similar and would probably never make it to the pack.

Two of the five were young men. I got one of them and a girl. Herb was teaching another young woman. We did not want gender to be a strong factor in training.

I said to Tom, "I don't want to frighten you or Linda but I want to train hard. It's like going to boot camp. The training will be harsh but you both need it to break out of your comfortable moulds. Almost all of us have been too comfortable in life and are hesitant to change, especially if it means work."

Tom was 22 and taking electrical engineering. He was flustered. "You want us to join an army?"

"That's a good way of saying it. You get out of this exactly what you put into it."

"How long is this going to take?"

"Boot camp will be three weeks because you will only be with us a part of the time. The training will take years. You saw our friends at the start when the demonstrated the use of judo?"

"Yes I did."

"They had some previous experience and we gave a lot more. If you work hard, it will take three years. At the end of that time you should be just as good."

"I'll have graduated by then. I already took karate as a kid. I'm not new to the sport."

"You took a total of two years and eight months. You were twelve when you started and you stopped when puberty made you pursue other interests."

"How do you know all that. I told nobody."

"No faith in Eastern mysticism? We learn to fight and to know our opponents. Your mind is a wonderful tool that can do much more than you realise."

He just stared at the explanation and I said, "I choose to lay my cards on the table. You know very little about the sport but you can still learn. In three years, you would have a mid level black belt. The training will carry over to your studies in a few months after you adjust."

"What do you mean?" He did not have the study habits he needed to succeed.

"You're going to be confused and your marks will drop a few percent. When you find you can concentrate better your marks will rise above what you now have."

He thought for a minuted and said, "I'm not sure if I can commit myself for that long."

I smiled at him and said, "That's fine. You can still try. I did say you get out what you put in. Others who choose to work harder will have a better chance of succeeding."

I turned to Linda and said, "My crystal ball says that you had four years of study. It was one year when you were ten and then three more starting when you were fourteen. Your case is no different. Your marks will drop then go up. Your attitude will help you later in life to get what you want. It's something like reading Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War'.

"I don't know how you knew but you were right. I could use some help to get my marks up. I only have one more year to go before I graduate."

"You can get a better understanding of yourself in that much time. The benefits will carry on for the rest of your life."

"I'd like to try," she said earnestly.

For the next three days we checked on out new home near the school. It was quite modest for our current standards but it was certainly luxurious even in the neighbourhood the home sat. It would still be a few weeks until they were done and we looked for furniture.

The rest of the pack was dispersed. One more pack home was being set up in Halifax even though this was a hot spot for police activity. The majority of the students were in Toronto and Montreal. The farm here in Ottawa was more of a place to camp and have fun. The condos were looking good but would still take a long time until they were completed.

Our investigations did not falter. All the information was put into files for delivery later. Nicolas was spending his spare time in the computers. He had copied thousands of incriminating files that were now being deleted. When the time was ripe, the files would be put back in place.

The two remaining politicians had retired rather than be hounded the way their colleague now was. The foreign newspapers stayed to continue the investigation because we kept them fed. The RCMP made broad statements that they were going to get to the bottom of this case but they meant to find us and how we came by the information.

News was leaked from and about other Canadian cities so that Ottawa was not going to be the only hot spot. Bobby liked tweaking noses so he and his group had a great time touring Canada by train and private plane.

When we could, we followed our national police and the CSIS to pick out who were rotten apples. Some of others had bruises and could go bad at the drop of a hat. These were best dealt with if they received a personal warning that listed their transgressions. Who knows, it may even work.

Soon this led to the civilian employees and only a few of these were bad. Twelve of the employees though were in the employ of other countries.

The news about us had already gone out and computers were disconnected from the net or much more stringently safeguarded. The search lead to universities because this is where people would learn a lot about computers. None of us were taking computer courses and those that we tested out in had lower marks. I was pretty sure they would pass us by.

During the interval we signed up seventeen students. Only four were young men. We knew their abilities and their drive. The hard part was to encourage them to do their individual best.

As part of the training we had some training for the women to prevent rape. Herb acted as he heavy and found himself on his back a lot. Melissa took the four young men and taught them some of the moves they already knew but this time she showed them how to move with grace. It was easy to do when she elevated herself just a bit and seemed to float to the ground. Her actions were subtle enough that the males did not know what she did but she did it differently than anybody had done it before.

The men were captivated and Melissa used it to her advantage. The men started to expend a little more effort because they wanted to impress their instructor.

Angie Ball came by to critique what we were doing. She had very little to go on so she said little and watched a lot. She tried to memorise just how competent our students were now and would later use that information to see how we were progressing. I liked the woman because she lived the way we did and played hard and worked hard. She had a husband that was a detective and three nearly grown kids so I was not about to ask her to join our group.

Some of the security were rotated so they too could go to university. Some were as old as forty but pleased like teenagers about learning in this environment.

The mini semester we were in was only eight weeks long. Seven of those weeks we trained people in karate and in judo. I had a chance to show the girls how to shoot on the archery team but again I would not join.

Angie said to me, "You are an amazing young lady. Is there anything you are not good at?"

"Thanks for your compliment but that is a question I can't answer very well."

"Well you have done marvellous things with those you and your group have taught. It's almost like that kung fu series. People are extra polite to each other and then try to kill one another. It appears that they study more and drink less. Do you use any of those occult powers to fight and in archery?"

"Actually I do."

Her eyebrows went up. "Please tell me."

"It is not all bullshit when you relax and focus all your senses outside of your body. The wind is variable and if you look around, you can see the hair on a young lady's head move or the leaves on a tree. Even the arrow has character and they are not always the same. I have to focus internally too so I can time my breathing and heartbeat so they work as they should. When I am familiar with my body, arrows, bow and the wind, there is no chance of not getting a bullseye."

"What about fighting?"

"The same. Here I add seemingly random movements of my opponent so I know how he will move."

"How are you at poker?"

"Our group does not gamble anymore."

"Really! Tell me what your secret is that makes those you teach do so well?"

She was smiling eagerly because she really wanted to know. I said, "I'll return the compliment but it won't be flattery. You're not a fake. You work hard and you're fair. You always seem to have some time for others. The members of our group are not hypocrites or at least not much. The students see us the way we want them to be.

"Like you, we have time for the students. Many have social problems and they have a place to go when they come to our home. They get to blow off a little steam and have a good time in a safe responsible manner."

Angie said, "I've heard of your home. It's supposed to be very beautiful. I hear some of the couples can find a place to be by themselves."

She was talking about sex here and was concerned. "That's natural. We are not altering human nature but finding a path that does not clash with the customs of the majority of the students. Some of those couples will marry one day and others will have a safe place to have fun."

"I'm not going to debate that. You help everybody even those working towards a PhD. Your group covers every imaginable course."

"To answer your first concern, and make you feel better, the girls coming to our house sit down for gab sessions. Most of them are now fairly well informed about disease and birth control. We give talks about that. Though it may look otherwise, Stan was part of a planned pregnancy and so was Jessica and Jordan."

"That is another thing I heard. Dr Sanborn has been talking to me about your children. I hear they are adults in infant bodies. They take those entering your home and wrap them around their fingers."

I had to grin now, "I guess that means you want a chance to see if you are supple enough to bend around those digits?"

"I'd just love to meet the children."

"Well, I'm inviting you, your husband and your children to come to our home the day after tomorrow. How does seven sound?"

"My family?"

"And why not? If you find the need, there are always some free bedrooms. You're obliged to change the linen after."

Angie turned red and I smiled and she knew she was caught. "I'll see if Bert and the kids can make it."

Kim asked me later, "What was your reason for inviting a detective over to sup?"

"Angie would make a good recruit though she's old. I want to see just what her family is like and we may get a package deal."

Our home also had six security people and three of them were signed up for classes. We also had seven girls and six boys that had been runaways. They all had some qualities we could use but only one of each gender would probably make it to the pack. We could handle more but or strength was in our small numbers. We could see to the needs of every individual in our pack. We simply would not have the time we had before to do this if we expanded greatly. I also knew that we had to grow.

Our method of teaching was hard on us. We pushed the information into the young minds and placed it where it should go so it could be used efficiently. It helped the student the same way a librarian stocked the shelves in a library.

We did the same thing for the university students coming to our home. Sometimes it was just the rearranging of facts so that searches could be done quicker. We kept our eyes out for politicians in the making. Those future leaders were sorted as to those that were more prone to do what was right. Those were given the help so they had a better chance to succeed.

An idea had come out in one of our discussions when we first came to Ottawa. We knew a great deal about our minds and those of an ordinary human. Later when we gathered students, we selected individuals that would become pack. They were now our guinea pigs. Their minds were studied intently and we used our powers of healing to encourage small portions of the brain to develop. These same areas were where our individual talents resided.

This was valid research. We were very careful in our efforts and found that the powers they gained were almost as powerful as our own. Since they had only one power, they did not have the control we had. Over a few months, we stimulated different areas until they were pack in almost every way.

Intelligence had gone up but not nearly as much as what ours had with Abicore. Their sexual appetites rose too but again not as much as ours. Theirs was more of a liberation that was seen in the 70s.

Abicore was finally administered and the individuals esper abilities took on a more polished finish. Their need for sex rose considerably and we had to wait to measure their intelligence but I knew it was rising to what we had. The only other attribute that Abicore did was to change their genetic structure so they could pass their traits down to their decedents.

Ellen, Nicolas and Anthony did the same things in with their groups. We visited every week and it was hard to separate after. The rest of the pack drifted through. They were always on the lookout for potential pack members, criminals and problems. These had a chance to rest between assignments and even help teach.

Their group was working hard in physics to broaden the pack understanding. We had tried to find out how we did what we did. Very little was learned but it was a start.

Nicolas' had little free time. He took classes like we did and worked hard to delve into the unknown but he still had to be the brains behind the assets our corporation owned.

Those attending the University in Toronto had their own area to explore and so would other groups. I think ours was the easiest in a way. We were predominantly focussed on the general population of Earth. We could make discoveries a lot easier.

It became so crowded in our home at times that we negotiated for the large home next to us. We would take possession of this structure in a few weeks.

Thursday came around and we prepared for our guests. We did nothing different because we always made a lot of food. Angie and her family arrived and I met them at the door holding Stan in my arms.

Angie came in and her eyes immediately went to Stan. My boy made another conquest in that second. When the family closed the door behind them, I was introduced to Bert the husband and father then Cassie the seventeen-year-old daughter. The next was fifteen-year-old Adam and finally thirteen-year-old Mark.

The boys were problems I knew even before they entered the house. I introduced Stan and he shook hands with Angie and said, "I'm so glad to finally meet you. My mother thinks highly of you."

Angie and the rest could not talk. She knew how bright the children were but now the facts were before them.

Stan said verbally, "Perhaps you should put me down, Mom. I should seat our guests before they trip."

"Thank you, Stan. Your such a wonderful son. Perhaps you can entertain our guests while I look to our meal."

"I would be honoured to, Mom."

I put Stan into Angie arms instead of putting him down. Stan sniffed Angie's perfume and said, "I like that scent. Now lets sneak off to the living room before your husband catches on that you now have a boyfriend."

Angie was still not prepared and Stan had to guide her with words until they sat in the chairs or on the couch.

Angie finally said, "I'm very surprised at how bright you are."

"Most people are, I'm afraid. Now will you tell me about my main competitor for your affections?"

It took a while before all this caught up with her and she was shocked. "Ahhh—Bert is a policeman."

Stan looked piercingly at Bert and said, "I'm willing to share if you are."

Bert got over his shock by bursting out with a gale of laughter. When he finally recovered he said, "I guess I'm going to have to fight you for her."

"You have no chance. I'll cry and curl into a ball and your wife will beat you senseless for being so cruel to me."

"She just might. I guess I have to reconsider and share."

Stan wiggled out of Angie's grasp only after he asked her three times. He walked over to Bert and stuck out his hand. Bert finally recognised this as a handshake and Stan said, "It's a deal then. I'd be hard put to throw you over my shoulder in a karate throw."

Bert broke out in another gale of laughter until Angie hit him. Stan went to Mark and the boy took a long time to shake his hand. He was amazed at Stan but also jealous now. He had a lot of issues to deal with and had to do it from an unstable mind.

Adam was next and he caught on much faster. Before he got to Cassie, Jessica walked into the room and Jason came in with his walker.

Stan made the introductions and called the two his sister and brother.

When Jason was near, Stan said to Angie, "Jason likes to be held. He doesn't drool much and is fully housebroken. Would you pick him up?"

"I'd love to." She looked at Jason and said, "Do you want up?"

Jason only nodded his head and put out his arms. Jason grabbed Angie around the neck and Angie closed her eyes in contentment.

Stan said with disgust in his voice, "I lose more women that way."

Bert this time could hardly stay on the couch from the amount of laughter. Jessica had to run to get a bottle of water and hand it to the man. Bert took it and drank then said, "Thanks, Jessica."

"You're welcome. I lose out too. Jason always takes them away. Why's that?"

"Youth I think."

Jessica said wistfully, "I wish I was that young again."

Bert's water bottle fell to the floor and Jessica ran to retrieve it. It took a long time before he was able to recover.

He said, "I'm sorry. I seem to get carried away."

"That's fine. Some people are frightened or too shocked to respond. Since you're a nice man, I'd like to be picked up too."

Bert looked around suddenly and then saw that it was ok and picked Jessica up and place her on his knee.

Stan ran over to Cassie and climbed up without asking and sat in her lap. When he got seated he said, "Hi Cassie. Your going to have to be my girlfriend until my brother steals you away."

Cassie was one of those that were too stunned to move. Stan said to everybody, "We're having Italian tonight. But Jason is getting my favourite."

Nobody said anything for a while then Bert got it and started laughing again. He had to put Jessica down so she would not fall. I came in before he recovered and I said, "I see that you are having fun." I sat down in another chair and said to Mark, "Are you any good at video games?"

The boy had to think. He was still jealous but this was fading somewhat. "I'm not bad. Do you play?"

"I used to but I quit."

Some of his vindictiveness came out and he said, "Too hard for you?"

Angie and Bert were shocked. I said, "Perhaps a little. I started to think hard on the games and then on my body. Figuring out what the games were about meant that they became too easy. You might say I outgrew them."

Mark was mildly angry and I switched to Adam, "What about you Adam?"

"I'm not bad. It keeps my reflexes up."

The boy used drugs a lot but the majority was marijuana and alcohol. Mark did not stick to just the soft drugs. The boys were like many disturbed young adults I met. They had some form of addiction problems but it was Mark that was going to fail and do so spectacularly. He had a sadistic streak compounded but a poor vision of self worth. He had a conscience and it told him how good he was and how he had to pull people down so he could be above them.

"Yes, it does. You might like to know that if children learn to play electronic games, they grow differently. They can multitask much better and in fact their brains are wired a little differently. On the other side of the coin is that they cannot remember their phone numbers or even important dates."

Bert said, "Is that what happened to your children?"

"No, it was just genetics. They play electronic games too but usually prefer social interaction."

"Now that's interesting. It's nice to not see a television in the room."

"We do have them to watch the news or to see a good movie."

Mark started to laugh because he figured we were idealists. I could see that his parents were angry at him. I said, "I agree with you. The television was called an idiot box. It numbs the mind like alcohol or drugs."

Mark said, "You said you watch it."

"We do. It's like having a beer when it's hot. You can get a little buzz but if you drink more then you can't think straight. Its like watching those sitcoms one right after the other. The characters are hollow or even transparent. All it does is deaden your brain for a half hour until its time to deaden it for the next half hour."

"What about sports?"

"That's different. We like amateur sports. We go to games and cheer on those we know that are playing. For the same reason we go to a play. We compete ourselves in this house. We spar with each other and we even make movies."

Angie said, "Home movies?"

"Yes but we act in them. You're holding three of the biggest hams we have."

Stan blurted out, "I'm an artiste."

"You're too heavy on the melodrama, Stan." He turned to look into Cassie's eyes and held her hand.



"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give us pause."



"That was Hamlet act 3, scene 1. How did I do Sweetie?"

Cassie was beginning to soften and said, "You're pretty good."

"Are you only saying that because you're my girlfriend?"

"No, you're good."

"You are a woman of discerning talent."

I said, "It's time to meet some of our other house guests. Would you like to go and find them with me?"

Angie said, "I'd love to."

We got up and Jessica put out her hands and Bert had to provide transportation. Angie now chuckled but Bert didn't seem to mind.

Some of the security were in the kitchen but so were some of the students. They had been informed of my other guests and stood up to be polite.

The basement was large and it was all a game's room. Ping-Pong, air hockey and foosball were popular. At the moment the two ping-pong tables were being extensively used. Four players were battling for world supremacy. The ball flew back and forth very quickly and the players were two to three metres from the table. The balls never lasted long because of the abuse they were put through.

There was a cheer when one ball hit the net and the game stopped. Once they knew we were here, the other team called a halt. These four were pack and so were three others. The rest were our students or those of the university's.

I introduced everybody and even the runaways made sure they smiled and looked happy when they were near a cop.

Bert said, "A long time ago I was fairly good at ping-pong but I was never as good as you guys. I could hardly see the ball and I was looking from the side."

The young lady of eighteen that had won the point, said, "We always play aggressively. To lose means I have to be Ashley's servant for an hour. She is not as particular about doing her chores and tries to gamble and hope that she can get others to do them."

Ashley was sixteen and said, "Me! Not particular! I did not burn the cake three days ago."

"I was defending my honour. Somebody said I was no better than you."

"Who was it? I'll kill them with my bare hands."

"I think it was Stan."

From Cassie's hands, Stan lamented, "It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust." He smiled at us then said, "Samuel Johnson in Rambler number 79, December 18 1750."

Ashley said, "Once a ham, always a ham. I'm going to talk to Jessica about you."

Stan replied with, "Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."

"A Midsummer Night's Dream act 1, scene 1."

Ashley said, "I rest my case."

Now it was Bert's time to laugh once more and I did too because this was not all put on. We did have jabs at each other but never to hurt.

Bert asked Jessica, "Do you read Shakespeare too?"

"It was forced upon me but then I had to use it in self-defence. One very young man that I know quite well would make my life miserable if I misquoted the bard."

Stan said, "Only because you picked on me when I paused a heartbeat more than I should when I acted my scenes."

"You make a good Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote."

"You have no grasp of the subtlety of the character."

Angie said, "Are they always like this?"

I said, "They love each other but there is always competition. It's when they are actually evenly matched that the competition get heated. Stan is not the only young person that waxes melodramatic on occasion."

The students and pack came over and I introduced them. It was the pack members that took Mark, Adam and Cassie to one side so they could be monitored and assisted.

Kim, Herb and Melissa came home later and after washing up they sat down at the large dining table to eat with us. They were already appraised about the two boys. We only saw problems ahead for both parents.

Bert was no shining example for the boys to follow. He stepped out on his wife once in a while. For the last few years at work, he was coasting on his previous accomplishments. He was still a fair cop but now concentrating on his retirement and that was ten years away.

Cassie was not bad in school but not as good as she could. She was in with the wrong crowd but there were some crowds that were even more wrong for her and she did not associate with them. She had a nervous personality and combined with her friends, she smoked a lot. She drank in moderation but we felt that the quantities would increase as time went on.

Angie was an astute woman and inside she hoped that we could do something for her children.

Bert said to Herb, "This house is very well organised. Even your dogs are polite and well mannered."

"I would like to lay claim to that but the truth is that the girls had trained the Jack Russels before I came on the scene. That big mutt with a contented look on his face over there was my dog. I had time to train him and we became a family."

Angie said, "Why do you say he's smiling?"

"He had baroness to keep him in line and a lot of pups on the way. He gets exercised a lot, his health is monitored as well as an expensive racehorse. He's loved and he has found his niche in this world."

Angie and Bert thought the same was true of Herb though they said nothing. They strongly believed that the children in the house were his. Herb turned this thought to his advantage. "Pups are not usually hard to train but some of them simply cannot learn. It's not that they're stupid, it's as if they somehow came to the conclusion that they do not want to learn. Others are just defective. Some of these could be helped but it takes a lot of work"

Greg said, "How do you help these ones?"

"Actually Kim knows a lot more about this. She is going to be the resident shrink. She has studied far more than what the university is likely to teach her in the next few years."

Kim said, "I have read a large number of books. To make sure the information was correct, I did my own research. I saw some disparities between what people thought and what I saw. There are many schools of thought on how people think and act. Goals or needs motivate us but we are inherently lazy. We all know that it's greed that makes most people do what they do.

"The knowledge I gained was used on animals then on people. If you talk to people and try to understand them then there are less surprises. I found that we are ruled by our glands the same as dogs or other animals. It's not very often that those glands are in alignment. The drugs doctors have access to are not that good in my opinion. Our race is in our infancy in how to regulate aberrant activity.

"I do not use drugs. Kindness and concern help a lot to win over an recalcitrant animals. Dedication and time allow a researcher to work away at the walls surrounding a mind until improvements are seen. This does not say that kindness will overcome all obstacles. Some people are seriously out of balance and no amount of concern will repair them.

"I've found inspiration in some far eastern works. They had their own slant on how the mind works. Some times an almost miraculous change is made but it still takes months to complete. Many times this is used along with homoeopathy."

Angie was the most intrigued by this revelation but the university students were also eager to hear more. Angie said, "What did you find?"

"With people, it is almost like we could set up a rapport. The deepest part of my mind could communicate with the deepest part of the person I was with. Both of us have to be knowledgeable about this possibility and actively try to further this communication. It is along the lines of two people that are so deeply in love with each other that they can communicate in some unknown way."

The Ball family glanced at Herb and then back at Kim. We had decided months ago that we had to appear odd in ways other than our knowledge and intelligence. This oddness would cloak our abilities. People already had, through television and the movies, accepted a far eastern form of magic. We could capitalise on this and slowly bring out our abilities. It was a foregone conclusion that one day the world would hear about espers. We had to prepare for this eventuality. Our home was decorated in a Chinese motif to accentuate this fact.

"Did you have — this rapport with the father of your child?" Again Herb was looked at.

"As a matter of fact I did. When we met, he was in the back of a truck and I could not even see him but I felt him and some energy he gave off. He did not feel me until we got close."

"What happened to him?" Again they looked at Herb.

"Each of us are alone. We usually are born alone, go our own path and then die alone. In some cases we can be with someone just a portion of the time." Kim put some food in her mouth and chewed. When she finished she said, "This pie is delicious. Who made it?"

One of the university students put her hand up, afraid to intrude on what was said. Kim said, "You did a very good job. I'm sure you would do well as a chef."

Bert said, "Can this communication be turned on and off?"

"Like a policeman interrogating a suspected criminal?"

Bert paused at being so transparent and then said, "Basically, yes."

"The Chinese tried this but I think they had some faulty assumptions. We have a far better form of communication and there are a lot more of us to perform the experiments. If a lot of us tried a lot of different ways then it's possible that this could happen. This time I'm speaking from a statistical point of view."

"Are you experimenting this way now?"

"Yes we are. Our group is studying medicine. I'll be a psychiatrist in a few years. Melissa will be a pediatrician the same way. Herb's only aiming for a simple MD but I think he will go into biological engineering. My sister Piper will be our researcher to find the drugs we need to help humanity and possibly further our investigation into the mind."

Angie said, "I knew all of you had goals but I now see that you are working as a team to do this research. No wonder you were able to find out so much about schizophrenia and even find a possible cure for some of those individuals."

Kim said, "That discovery took a long time and the drug came much easier simply because we knew what we wanted from its structural formula."

Bert didn't know anything about this and said, "What is all this about?"

Nobody spoke so Angie said, "These people have been doing medical research with a well known clinic. They found many causes of schizophrenia that had not been known before. If that was not enough, they then developed a possible cure for one of the types."

Bert and looked piercingly at Herb. Herb finished chewing and said, "I think we were exceedingly lucky to find the first cause. The others are just variants of the first. We did not do this alone. The clinic had some very fine researchers that helped us. Medicine and research into it is not usually effective these days because a great many minds are necessary to work on the problems. In some cases, the people have to be trained in a variety of fields because so many divergent points have to be considered."

"You have no degree yet?"

"I'm a registered paramedic and a PA. I have always wanted to be a doctor. I have some training provided by the schools but most of what we know has been learned through books, other doctors or our own research."

"So why are you wasting your time taking courses here?"

"We're not wasting our time. We cannot treat patients now. We have to work with physicians. When we get our own licences then we have a bit more freedom."

I shifted the conversation away from ourselves until Bert started to talk about some of his work. He did not know about us because the government would not want everybody to know. We were into the city police computer and we knew that nobody knew about us. There were notices to report if there were any attacks on their computers. They also had to report if there were unknown investigators hampering ongoing police investigations. Ongoing in this case meant stalled or hampered by political clout.

After the meal, we sat in the living room. The students and Angie's children were downstairs making noise in the games room. Angie said to me, "I know you are not a doctor but what do you see about our children?"

"I feel that your sons look distracted almost as if they had been drinking. This was not the case because I could not smell alcohol and their pupils were not dilated. Mark has some other problems that will grow worse as time goes on."

"Is that all you are going to say? You must know more."

"I suspect more but their father will become upset. I always look at everybody around me."

"What will Bert get upset about?"

Bert said, "We don't need to go into psychoanalysis with this young lady."

"Perhaps we do Bert." She looked at me and said, "Please go on, Piper."

"In my opinion, Mark has some antisocial tendencies. Bert, I know, is already aware of this. When it's manifested then he will think it is his own fault when in fact it is the way Mark has been born and not how he was raised."

Bert got up and said, "I think it's time we left these good people and went home. I have some work to do."

Angie said quietly to him, "My family is important to me Bert. I plan on staying here to find out what I can do to help. You had better sit and listen."

Angie was never like this before and Bert was amazed at the change and surprisingly he did sit back.

I said, "I run into a lot of drug and alcohol problems in some of the students. A few we are able to help. Mark and Adam could possibly stay over since school has not started yet."

Bert blurted out, "My sons do not have a drug or alcohol problem."

I just stared at him until he sat back. Finally I said, "I know you do not want them to have a problem but your brand of positive thinking will not make a problem go away."

Angie said, "What would you do to them if they were allowed to stay over?"

"Something similar to an AA meeting. Perhaps I can reach the boys mentally. I make no promises but I would try."

Bert sarcastically said, "Now you are into faith healing?"

Herb was sitting back in his chair and said quietly, "This faith healing cured some schizophrenics and helped us find a drug. We don't understand what happens but it does work."

Bert said in a calmer voice, "I don't want my sons to be treated by you or your family."

"That's fine. We were not the ones pushing this idea. It's a lot of work on out part to help anyone."

I tried to defuse Bert's animosity but the family left twenty minutes later.

Herb said to me, "I'm afraid Bert is like most of humanity and we are going to have a long uphill battle to convince them."

The fall semester finally got underway. There were a lot more students on campus. We were effectively hidden by the mass of bodies. Forth year courses started very easy because the students had to get their minds focussed. We sat in classes and made notes like the rest. We were also able to reach those in Carlton University or pack members near Ottawa that were suffering under the dreary conditions.

Our gestalt was far from the strength of a full pack and it was further hampered by distance, but we were able to do some work.

The labs were child's play and so were the assignments. Our professors were worried about us as if we were competitors. So far they took the wait and see approach. They did not teach much and it was their assistants that presented the information. We were quiet in class. When student interaction was called for, we tried to separate. If a student wanted to lead we let him or her. Our efforts were spent in trying to keep the unit aimed at the goals we were supposed to pursue.

We scanned the student population in a general fashion then homed in on those that could fit into the pack. We also found those that were disturbed. Occasionally on our free time, we worked on them instead of treating sick children.

Dr Sanborn was invited to supper one day and marvelled at the home and the number of guests we had. He talked to us and was interested in what was said but he was very anxious to have some time with the children.

We excused ourselves and the doctor was happy to play the babysitter. Stan, Jessica and Jordan had fun with him because they knew he was one of their fans.

Jordan was not old enough to contain all of his urges. He managed to push his own feelings into poor Doc Sandorn's mind. The man had a full bladder and colon but could not relieve the pressure until Jordan was taken to the potty.

When the doctor emerged, he felt hungry but this type of hunger he had not felt for seventy one years. He wanted to be breast fed. He could almost feel the large nipple in his mouth. The poor man sat with Stan and Jessica as Jordan was fed. The urge only left when Jordan was full.

The confused but happy man left that night with a promise to return if he was needed.

Present and future politicians were found that could help us. It was not an election year so they were more relaxed. Those students we thought were good enough got our encouragement to run for election. Some of those that had been elevated to pack status were encouraged to become politicians.

Politicians we favoured that were already in office were guided so they could stay in office and further their ideas that coincided with ours. This dovetailed with the social circle that Janet Cullis introduced us to.

The movers and shakers of the city had all sorts of alliances that left them little room to manoeuvre. They had to back some politicians because those same politicians backed them. Shifting horses was difficult because the people we were trying to help did not come out and make the alliances.

There were some vacancies made when people were forced to retire but mainly these were federal politicians that had their constituencies far from Ottawa. We were not going to pull down politicians just to put in our own. We may vote them out but that was another matter.

Near the time for Christmas vacations, I found a young man running toward me and yelling my name. Behind him was one of the female students that was over at our house. The young man was Jeremy Helstrom, the one that had almost died in the bus accident.

"Hi Piper. I'm so glad to see you."

He was not worried, just happy. "Hi Jeremy. I see you must have graduated from high school. How's your family?"

"They're just fine. My mother found enough incentive to not say anything."

"I'm glad of that. What did you do to Ruth?"

I talked of keeping her word enough times until now it's a family secret shared by just the two of us."

"That's good to hear. What are you taking?"

"I want to be an Electronic Engineer but I won't get any specialized courses for a few years. What about you?"

The woman caught up to her companion and I said, "Hi Beth. How are you doing?"

"Great. I didn't know that you knew Jeremy."

"We ran into each other close to a year ago."

"It's a small world."

"It sure is."

Jeremy said, "Beth's my cousin. What are you taking?"

"We're taking courses relating to medicine."

"We?"

"The guys that were at the accident. Herb, Melissa, Kim and I are in our forth year of a Bachelor of Science degree."

"Wow, I didn't know you were going to university at the time. I thought you were going to that private school."

"We were. We tested out in the first three years and now is the first semester that we're actually taking classes."

Beth said, "You taught though."

Jeremy looked at me with a question but didn't say anything. I said, "We taught martial arts to some of the students. We'd rather teach than have to take a sport."

Beth said, "You're good, you should."

"It's not our style."

I invited Jeremy and Beth over to the house the next day for a meal and a talk. The next day Herb said, "Jeremy took after his mother. What we did in Orillia was mentioned. So far it's only what was in the papers."

"I don't think he would say anything about the clots."

"I hope that's the case."

We had a meal with Beth and Jeremy and there was no sense saying anything about the gossip because it was public knowledge.

I checked Jeremy over and he had healed fairly well. Jeremy wanted to talk to me in private and after a look I knew why. When I went to the kitchen to get some drinks, Jeremy came too.

He said, "Ellen may have done something extra when I was hurt."

"What do you mean?"

"I had cancer of the bladder. My operation was put off for a while longer and when I went for tests, it was gone."

"There have been many documented cases of spontaneous remission."

"Believe me when I say I am not complaining. I said nothing to anybody. The only thing that was different was when I was in the accident. You saved my life and Ellen found my blood clots. The doctor had to give me medicine to keep them away. All of your family is amazing, especially your children. I have no proof but I think that one or more of you somehow healed me."

"You have not examined all the possibilities. If you were a doctor, you would know some of the weird things that happen in our bodies. A rumour like that could hurt my family."

"I know and that's why I said nothing. My own family suspect the same thing but they're not talking either. We don't even talk about it because it's too freaky."

"Stick to the reality you are familiar with, Jeremy. You'll have a happier life. That same rumour could destroy your chances at an education."

"I know and I'm just saying thanks for saving me and thanks if you did anything else."

"You're welcome for anything we may have done, Jeremy."

What Beth and Jeremy had said about the accident spread around the school. We did get a little more cooperation when we asked for it but few people asked for the particulars.

Dr Jacques Robillard, the Dean of Medicine was one of those that did ask. He called us all to his office. He had to hear everything that happened that day. Robillard was a little put out that we had started medicine without a licence but he knew it was in an emergency situation.

He quizzed each of us on what we had done and then why. He tried to appear as a concerned individual but mainly he was just curious.

I asked, "How's the search for volunteers coming?"

"We sent out the group of reports. One was our own findings and then another was added about the testing method to find the segment of the schizophrenic population. Your method of selection is completely new and not accepted. We ran through a computer based program to find the best match and it seemed that you have it. Did you have access to a supercomputer?"

Herb said, "The clinic owns three of them."

"Owns?"

"Yes. Time on the machines is rented out but we got a portion of what was left."

"You did the programming?"

"The programming's not hard. The operating system does the work. It's like writing a small game in basic. None of us are really good at computers because we've not had the time to devote to it."

"If you say so. Tell me why they have three of them?"

"The clinic is growing and needs the tools. The computers are paid for by tax deductions and the revenues from their rental. The machines are not a drain on the bottom line."

"Are you people shareholders."

"In a manner of speaking that's true. I hope you do not think that the reports were altered to reflect what we wanted?"

"I don't think so. We are doing our own tests. We have done a followup study and found your patients leading normal lives now. Their families and the patients talked of their previous conditions. The changes were quite remarkable."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"The super computers also explain how you could work miracles on human DNA."

The truth was that the computers helped a lot and with Nicolas' help they worked much better. It was the pack mind that did the actual programming and this type of work was spearheaded by Nicolas. Even he was amazed at what we had accomplished.

Christmas Break and our exams were coming up and I wanted the pack to get together. Toronto was the first choice and Tiffany was eager to have us. We filled the house much more than usual because of all the students.

The first semester came to a close. We wrote lots of exams and our useless notes were handed in to be marked. The exams were anticlimactic. Testing out was a job to do but the writing of exams was in my mind since I was young. At that time I knew the work in a university would be hard and somehow it slipped that lots of others passed the exams too.

The old and the new pack members arrived in Toronto, we had a chance to tell our stories and hear what the rest had to say. Orgies were what usually happened. Swapping saliva, semen and vaginal discharges could elevate one of the students when they were not suited. This put a restraint on the festivities and it looked like the pack was acting elitist when it wasn't.

The pack had their own form of orgy and formed a group mind. We felt the closest one human could feel for another. If it were not so tiring, we would never leave it.

We worked on a method of destroying the Abicore in our bodies. Research was always good because we learned. If we found a way to do this then we could join the students with no problem. The second benefit was because if we found another rogue esper, we could deal with them. A secondary study was to see if this method could be altered so it could be either temporary or permanent. If it was permanent then it should erase the changes in our DNA that Abicore made.

Nicolas' group took control of the group mind and focussed on physics. He was having a difficult time making any headway in his research. In the process we learned what he knew.

Other groups used our own 'super computer' to find out about population dynamics, electronics, and even the ultimate future of the human race.

Herb had not gone back to Orillia but we did phone, email and even internet video. Ellen was not showing much but she was showing. We planned on going home during Spring Break and there would be a lot of tongues wagging then. Ellen was proud of her condition and four young men were happy to have sons or daughters. They even knew which of the tenants of Ellen's womb was their child.

Little Megan had blossomed and she took over taking care of the kids. She was their friends and their leader in a way. She was not as bright as our children and we attributed it to her being formed when her parents were using the oldest forms of Abicore. She had received the newest form as soon as we knew it was safe and hoped she would grow stronger. She did and was still growing but had a much slower start than our children.

The pack had certain objectives. It was driven by those of us that pushed for a particular need. This was much like any politician. There were also grassroot needs. The pack was now evenly divided as to gender. Many of the pack had come from the streets. The women found that they were safe now. The pack protected our own very aggressively. The women wanted children. Most of this need was instinctual and glandular. The women saw what they would get and the males were eager to donate semen. The pack mind subtly shifted to a more paternalistic approach to existence.

We did a lot of research on inbreeding. Contrary to popular belief it was sometimes beneficial. During the second world war, many men joined the military that had lived in the Ozarks. They were related to each other in many ways but they were not deformed, they were actually good human specimens. They were strong and smarter than the average.

When research was done, it was found that the families historically had not allow their daughters to marry one of the bad boys. The misfits of inbreeding had a chance to die without having young. Only the strong survived, just like Darwin said. After a few centuries, this form of eugenics purged the families of the undesirables leaving healthy offspring. This did not mean that continuous inbreeding was good but it did have its place.

We could accomplish the same results with our ability to heal. The epitome of human evolution, or at least what we foresaw, could be at hand.

Kim and I did not mind having sex even with some of the males but we were hesitant about having a child by other than our man. Herb on the other hand was asked to help fill some wombs. It was a double standard but it was also the way we felt. Not all the women felt it was the best time to start families and would not participate now. The pack mind was not rigid except when it came to security so we could follow our own path.

I was asked many questions and sometimes just had to be with somebody for a while. I was still the leader and the pack needed to see one.

Herb had problems. He loved our children and would like to have more. The trouble arose when he wanted to help raise his children. A year ago that would not be difficult but we were now splitting up for security reasons and to clean our country better.

Herb was not the only possible sperm donor. The four boys that had come to us as male prostitutes were seen with desirable characteristics that the women wanted to perpetuate. Others donated too but they were usually the male member of a new sub family.

We went back to Ottawa happy and a little disappointed by express train. The pack was doing good but we were leaving. Toronto though did not feel like home now and I knew that Ottawa would not feel that way to me either. Our lives were not in as much danger than usual but I still felt almost rudderless.

My feelings improved when we got back to school. A few weeks into the new year, we found that a group of mental institutions were interested in our procedure. They would have to sign the same papers as the school to get the test kits and the giardiniere-49.

Results of the injections could be seen in as little as four hours. In thirty six hours dramatic improvements would be seen. Only in a few cases, would a second injection be necessary.

By the end of January, we elevated the next group of university students. Nicolas was in the same process and now we had twenty three more young men and women.

Our structure was forced to change by the end of February. The newcomers were much more prudish than we were. This we had foreseen but the outcome was in doubt. They were as horny as us and looked for release. They found a friend and stayed monogamous. The males did not mind seeing two or more girls get it on but ran home to mommy if they saw two guys.

Girls were always more open to experiment but they too were conditioned by the mores of North America. They were turned on by two guys but not as much as a guy seeing two girls. When the girls saw girls they invariably compared the technique to what they knew about male partners.

We could not keep taking in children from the street. For one, there were a lot less than there used to be. The ones that were left, were difficult to reach never mind elevate. Their claim to fame was that they were more open to innovation.

Angie had come to me the day after her visit to apologise. I had said, "There is no need to do this."

"But there is. I know that Mark and Adam are drinking and into drugs. Bert is into denial and he's a cop."

"He's a parent. All you can do is wait for them to crash and then perhaps and only then could we possibly get a chance."

Our chance came the first of March. Angie phoned me in hysterics. Mark had been at a party and knifed another of the boys and was himself knifed. Cocaine and other drugs were found at the scene. Mark was hospitalised with an overdose on top of the wound.

Herb and I were in the hospital in twenty minutes and met both Angie and Bert in the waiting room of the ICU. I scanned both people and they were in shock and denial.

Bert wanted to scream at us to ask what right we had to be here but he said nothing. Angie left his arms and hugged me as she cried even harder. Herb quietly asked Bert what happened but he already knew all that the father knew.

The four of us took chairs so Angie would relax. In a moment I got up and entered the unit. The nurses ignored me because they were told to. Mark was hooked up to a lot of equipment. I read the notes and read the minds of the nurses. It didn't look good.

I had thickened my skin since I left home. I figured that I was one of the most pragmatic people around. It was going to take a lot of work to save Mark's life and even more after that to make him a functioning member of society. Mark's condition was deteriorating and he would be dead in twelve to fourteen hours.

Instead of wasting my time I walked into the waiting room. Angie had hope in her eyes and so to did Mark's father. I told them Mark's condition and gave my prognosis. Angie screamed and tried to beat on me as if I would change my mind by force. Angie finally just sagged against me.

I said to Bert, "Do you want to talk to the doctor to see if my prediction is right?"

"What's the use? He's going to die. I saw the reports and the wound."

"I may be able to save him."

Both Bert and Angie stared at me. "I might be able to save his life. It will take a lot of my own power to do so."

Angie said, "Please! Please, save him."

"Your son was sick before today. I'm not going to waste my time trying to cure him when he'll go out next month and do this again."

"What do you want!?"

"I'll cure Mark, if I'm able. If I do, I get him for three months. He's an addict and it takes that long for the drugs to completely leave the brain cells. He cannot go to his school or visit his friends. Possibly I can cure his mind. The holistic approach is the only way he will make it in life."

"Then do it," she screamed.

I looked at Bert and he sagged but I could still read his mind. When he said nothing I said, "Well Bert, will it be your delusion that Mark is a happy carefree son that dies or is it your son that will do the dying? I want a verbal contract. I'm giving him some of my life and I'm telling you that he is presently not worth it."

Finally he said, "Do it, god do it."

"I get three months? No bullshit."

"You got it." I took the time to see that he was serious.

I went back in and so did Herb. We touched Mark's body though we did not need to. It just felt better to do so. We poured our healing in. After fifteen minutes, more of the pack came and tried their best. The final one to come was Ellen.

Those that had worked on Mark, left and only our sub group sat with the boy's parents. When Ellen, Herb and I came out I said, "Mark will live." Angie rushed me and hugged me tightly to her.

Mark left ICU the next day with a perplexed staff. The knife wound was almost completely healed. Angie had come to me and told me this but she had not said anything to the staff. After school, Bert came and said in a humble voice, "I don't know how to thank you. We saw the wound. We have photos of it. There are pictures of the inside of Mark showing how deep the knife went and how much damage it did. The doctor told me it was a miracle."

I simply said, "It was, Bert."

Bert looked at me and said, "I want to thank you again. I am also telling you that I'll stick to my word. Mark was always wild and unstable. I never wanted to see this and hoped he would grow out of it but he didn't."

"He wouldn't have. He would only get worse. There'll be a lot more work for me but this has to be administered a bit at a time."

Bert was worried and asked quietly, "What will he be like?"

"He will get deathly sick when he takes recreational drugs. He will not be able to have more than one beer and even that will be difficult. Mark's mind has some dormant areas that never developed. They deal with empathy, love, compassion and cause his warped outlook on life. He'll be a good student that listens to advice."

When I paused, Bert said, "That sounds great. What's the down side."

"Perhaps there will be none but if there is, it will be at the expense of his drives. He was never driven to do anything before but he could have. He will be no different than the majority of humanity."

"No drive?"

"He will be much like you. He will not work hard at getting ahead once he gets a fair job."

"I work hard!"

"Bert, if I know about your son, I know about you. You've been fooling yourself for the last few years in more matters than your son. I suggest you dive into work the way you used to do. The joy you used to have will emerge. Who knows, you may even get a promotion."

"I guess I have been slacking off."

"There is one more thing I want."

"What is that?"

"Police gossip as bad as the teachers. What we did can put us in danger. I know it would have to have come from you or Angie. I know Angie will remain quiet."

"I won't say anything."

Mark had been more than half to blame for the fight he was in. The other boy was three years older and hurt less. I was not going to step in and interfere with the law this time. I would get Mark if there was enough time before his trial or I would get him after.

March break came and we went back to Toronto. The mood was different on the train. The carefree attitude was muted. Some members were contemplating how their lives would change as they became parents. The newcomers to our pack had slowly shed some of their old customs. One man would take two women. The women could be very affectionate but not quite up to having sex together. With enough time, perhaps they would come around. With the expected surge in pack members, we were worried about how the pack would change.

The pack had grown substantially over the last few months. The newest members were accustomed to forming a gestalt but bigger is better in this case. The mores of the older members infused the newer ones but it also worked in reverse. We worked on old problems facing us. Plans were refined when concerning some particular politicians and plans for our own particular group were reassessed.

Fully a third of all the female pack members found themselves happily pregnant before we left Toronto. A portion of the newest members were this way and they left to get married. I thought it was a mistake but there was a lot of flexibility within the pack.

We went north to Orillia. This time four young men and seven women accompanied Ellen on her trip with us. We drove the big old motorhome we used when we first attacked Knox' home. There were not quite enough seats but then again the pack was horny and they used the floor a lot. The guys were tired even before we left Toronto but the girls knew how to have some fun. Ellen was even more horny as a pregnant woman if that was possible.

Ellen had phoned ahead to get the house ready. We liked the warmth and the hot water. The house was locked when we arrived and everybody inside was waiting for a surprise party for Ellen. Ellen stayed in the motorhome long enough to prepared her own greeting.

Ellen opened her door and Shelly Hays jumped out and yelled, "Surprise!"

Greg and his wife were right behind as was Jeff and his wife Jacqueline. There were forty one people trying to hide in the large house when we arrived but all of them fell silent before they got nearer than a metre.

Our horny slut smiled widely. When she had opened her door she was in the process of taking off her heavy coat. This was to show her young looking body and very sexy dress. The bulging around the waist was not that noticeable. None of them was looking at the bulge as anything other than some extra fat. They were stunned because Ellen looked far younger than she had been when we were last here.

We had trouble getting in so we waited outside and just watched.

It was Greg that said, "My god Ellen, you've changed."

"Hi Greg. I was going to surprise you all in little groups and here you are surprising me."

Rose Thompson, Greg's wife, said, "Well you surprised me. What did you do to yourself? Did you do what they do on those make over shows?"

"A little like that." Ellen went forward and hugged Rose then her friend Shelly. The spell was broken and Ellen went around and hugged and kissed all her relatives.

We finally got into the already packed house and we were introduced or reintroduced. The young men and ladies of the family dove on the younger newcomers. The older women dove on the babies.

This time it was Jessica's turn to break the news about her intelligence. She smiled at all her fans and said clearly, "Hi, I'm glad to meet all of you but I have to go to the bathroom."

There was utter silence again and Stan used the interval to say, "See what you did Jessica. We're lucky it's not summer. Flies would land in their mouths."

I handed Stan to Greg and said, "You're babysitting, Uncle Grandpa."

Kim took Jessica to the bathroom but it was just an excuse to shock the guests. The youngsters were out in the warm motorhome that had thankfully been aired out for the last ten minutes.

Mrs Hays held Jessica and was still not able to talk. Jordan could talk mentally but his verbal skills were not that good yet. He was safe to be held the women though.

A potluck meal had been set up and all of us ate. Herb had a bottle of beer in his hand but I knew he only sipped it. He was talking to Greg about his schooling.

Greg said, "You are going to be a doctor? Why that's great news."

"The rest of us are going to school too. Ellen is changing horses and taking up accounting. Kim and Melissa are going to specialise after becoming doctors. Piper is going after a Pharmacology degree and one in Biological Chemistry."

"That's amazing. I know they will do well."

"I know they will too because after the remainder of this semester we get our science degrees."

"How'd you manage that? I heard you just started."

I walked around the room and let Herb explain. I found Jacqueline and Jeff's baby and got a chance to hold him. Being a mother, I had to check Michael out. He had some minor problems and I let my healing flow into the child. When I looked up I found two women looking at me intently. I read their minds and saw possible trouble. They could sense that I was sending some of my power to the child. They had minor talents but they came by them naturally.

I had been introduced to them but had not read much of their thoughts. They stared at me intently until the older one, Ida whispered, "You have the gift." Her friend Stella agreed with the assessment.

I read each of them much deeper and saw no real problem. These women knew that sometimes the Stewarts could heal with the touch and these women felt it.

I said, "Let's talk later if you too can keep quiet about this."

Ida said, "We won't say anything, but is it true?"

"Certainly."

Both stood up and said, "Oh!" This made me think that they could already communicate but didn't know it.

Before I gave up the baby I found out that two more women of the clan may have some psychic ability. I shared the knowledge with the rest but there was no need to worry. Nobody would believe I could do anything even if the two women talked.

Stella went and had her talk with Ellen and when she held her hands she froze and her eyes opened. She whispered, almost involuntarily, "Your pregnant!"

Ellen smiled and said, "Why, yes I am. You're the first to notice. Can you tell how many?"

All conversations in the room stopped. Stella concentrated and finally said, "You have four babies but it's like —"

"Why your right Stella. Let's leave the rest?"

Shelly had to have given up possession of the children but had stayed near Ellen. The woman was in shock again and just looked at her friend. There were so many questions the friend asked but none passed her lips.

Ellen said, "Yes Shelly, I have quads. I'm going to be run ragged changing diapers."

Shelly finally said in a quiet voice, "How?"

"You have to find a man that is interested in your body. You both get naked and —"

"I mean how did it happen to you?"

"The same way it happened to all women, Shelly."

"You're too — old for that."

"Well I guess I got my clock ticking again."

"But four?"

"I am telling you the truth when I say that this is the number I planned on before I got pregnant."

Rose dragged Greg over and she said, "Ellen, how did your body change?"

"How about we have some girl talk tomorrow?"

"When?"

"How about nine? You won't be sleeping well tonight."

The rest of the women homed in on Ellen like hens ready to peck to death one of their number that was wounded.

Stella and Ida had to touch Ellen and then they went around touching the guys. We watched them touch Herb and then leave. When they came to Anthony he extended his hands for them to hold and he then smiled and bowed.

The two women were flustered but went to the rest of the young men and got similar treatments.

It took a long time to clear the house. Ida and Stella had rides so I whispered to them, "Come tomorrow at nine. I can heal but it takes a lot of effort on my part. Remember, you talk and I'll not speak to you."

Stella said, "We won't talk. This is so exciting."

"It's even more exciting for Ellen. She has been waiting to come home and shock the family and she's succeeded."

Ida said, "How did four young men do it?"

"Four eggs drop over a period of a few days and four men make sure Ellen was happy. All four eggs attach to her womb. The rejection that would have occurred did not get a chance to start."

"What —"

"Tomorrow!"

"We'll see you tomorrow."

When they finally left, Ellen's smile fell. I said, "Is it what you expected?"

"It was that and more but I didn't think they would distance themselves that much from me."

"They're human. They'll get over it. If they knew where and when the delivery was then they will be around to help."

"I hope not."

The women arrived just before eight the next morning. Their curiosity was just too strong to stay away.

Herb's family was important to the pack. They had natural talents that we had to investigate. Kim and I knew that the family was somehow a nebulous entity similar to the pack when we found out that Greg had a talent. It only made sense to merge the two if security would not be compromised seriously.

Rose and the rest wanted answers now but Ellen was cruel. "I asked you ladies to come at nine. I enjoy your company but then I will have to repeat myself when Ida and Stella arrive."

Jacqueline had taken a sick day to be here and said, "Tell us something!"

Ellen talked about her life in the university. She mentioned how her features slowly changed and the young men came to her like bees to a flower. She was not too cruel because she mentioned all the juicy tidbits that the women wanted to hear. By the time Stella, Ida and three more women arrived, the women knew that Ellen had a very active love life.

Kim, Melissa and I were sitting with Ellen doing some detailed searching of minds and then continued when the five women came in. Along with our search we put in the blocks we used for the people that knew about the pack.

We finished at nine thirty and Ellen started her real talk. "The Stewart family has some peculiar members." She listed those that were now dead and then those not near. Each individual was known or suspected of some esper talent and all of these were listed.

This was news to some of the women because they had married into the family or had not been interested in learning what they thought was bullshit.

Ellen said, "I had two related talents. I could sense when something was medically wrong and also the ability to heal with my mind." We scanned those present and four of the eleven women did not believe this at all.

"Some of you think that I'm delusional. I think you should consider that it is you that are this way. Do you remember how old I am? The last war had just started when I was born." Ellen stood up and ran her hands down her midriff. "Do I look that old?"

Rose said, "How did you do it?"

"I'll get to that in a while but some of us are still stuck." Ellen talked to each of the women that were finding difficulty in seeing Ellen now and remembering her age.

Ellen wore a sleeveless dress and put out her hand to the women and held their hands. "Look at my skin. Is that the skin of an old woman?"

The ladies recognised the fact but didn't understand it. "This now brings me back to my ability to heal." Everyone looked at her very intently now. "I healed myself and I had others help me heal. You have the proof before your eyes. You will not see any scars on me and my skin is like that of a woman of thirty five. A woman of that age can have children and that is the case with me."

Rose asked, "How did you do this? Can we do it too?"

"The people with Stewart genes have this ability though it is latent in most of you. Others may have the ability to various degrees."

She eagerly said, "How do we learn?"

"We teach you if you're able to learn."

"We?"

"Yes, everybody that arrived with me can heal. The children are too young to do it correctly but they will be much stronger than any of us." The women looked at Kim and I and we read their questions. All of them were centred on learning what we knew.

Ellen picked out one of the women that was having the most difficulty in accepting the facts. She said, "Before we begin, I want to ask Beatrice some questions."

"Me! I don't know anything about this."

"That's fine but you know about human nature. Tell me in your opinion what would happen if I put a sign out on my front lawn that said I was a mental healer?"

Beatrice thought this was a trick question and then said, "People would not believe it and think you were crazy."

"That sounds reasonable. Some people would come though. I said I can heal. I take a child with a wound on his arm and convince his body to close off the blood vessels and to then begin healing. Will that boy or his mother disbelieve?"

"If you could do that then they might."

"Good so far. If I did this a hundred times, would the rest of the world disbelieve?"

"Why are you asking me this?"

"You are the one that is having the most problems believing what you see with your own eyes. You touched my skin. It's not the skin of an old woman."

"You look young."

"You say that but your mind has difficulty making the fact find a place in your mind. Now, would the world believe me?"

"They would especially after a lot of tests."

"That's right. Some people would offer me lots of money to work for them. They would see me heal and try to find out how I do it. I would have no freedom. My children would be studied by scientists. The government would get involved and somehow my life would be ruined."

"The government would not do that. There are laws."

"There are but do you see any laws on the books to protect healers like me? Are you so naive that you believe that every single arm of the government is going to be out to help one old pregnant woman that looks young?"

Beatrice did not answer. Ellen said, "Governments act within the law for the most part but some departmental leaders will make shortcuts to do what they think is right. I would be picked up and analysed until I died of old age. Those shortcuts are illegal."

The women believed this would happen at least partially. Ellen added, "If I have the gift of healing then it would be no stretch of the imagination that the government or some large and powerful corporation would think to find out about those with the same DNA."

The women then saw that they too would be in danger especially those that had something to hide.

They stewed for two minutes then Ellen said, "This talk was to show you that anybody that can heal would be in danger. If I taught all eleven of you then eleven of you would be carted off for tests."

Stella said, "We can keep quiet about it."

"That's a start, Stella. You learn to heal just enough to save a life if you can do it without endangering our clan.

Ida was sympathetic to our cause and had an idea. "There are going to have to be rules that we have to follow. If we don't then we will all be carted off to the funny farm but they know we won't be crazy."

"You're right. We've wrestled with this question for years. Even as a young girl I was afraid of the government. At that time I thought the government was almost all made up of good people."

Ellen silently urged Ida until the woman said, "I've always been able to sense people's feelings. It was more than how they spoke or sat. I could walk up to a stranger from his back and understood how he felt. That was why I stayed away from most people all my life. It hurt to be near people that were bad."

Everybody looked at her and she quickly said, "I'm finding it difficult when you are all thinking of me. You are beating on my walls and I can't stand the noise."

Ellen clapped her hands violently and said, "Think about healing, and leave Ida alone. You can't help it but hurt her." Ida looked relieved that the attack had faltered.

Ellen said, "There is a lot to learn and it's not like taking a pill. Is there anybody here that does not want to try?"

Jacqueline said, "How will it be different?"

"It depends on what talent you have."

"I'm not a Stewart by birth. Can I do anything?"

Ellen looked at her earnest eyes and said, "We'll try."

Ellen walked among the women and touched them. Those that had some ability were told but some had none. Ellen told each of them the news. Some saw it as a relief. "I spoke of natural talent. We would like to try to heal all of you. This means that perhaps we can develop some sort of talent. We think that everybody has what we have in them but some have the ability closer to the surface."

Ellen asked each person if they wanted to continue or just watch. It was only three that were anxious and wanted to start right away. That was good because the rest of our group were ready to help the rest if the need arose.

Ellen place me with Rose. Kim got Stella and Ellen took Ida. We did not go rushing in because we were actually still investigating this natural phenomena. We had learned a lot since Ellen and Herb joined the pack and wanted to use that knowledge to learn more.

Those upstairs joined our gestalt as we looked at the three brains and then all of us concentrated on Rose. It was a gruelling hour. We were not after thoughts but feelings and the actual brain structure. We were still a lot quicker than we were with the pack members we had experimented on.

Rose had the latent ability to heal and we encouraged her brain to grow the way the healing ability was in our brains. We were not going to use Abicore if possible and we were going to stay away from most of our other abilities like we had done before. Our long term plans hinged on people not being frightened out of their wits about us.

The Stewart clan was going to be our spearhead. They would show the world their talent and we would fight to protect them. To do this safely they could not know that much about us.

We spoke verbally once in a while to reassure the rest of the ladies. When we finished with Rose we took a break and ate a meal of leftovers.

Rose said, "I don't feel much different. Perhaps I'm a bit tired."

I said, "You were excited and now you are relaxing. You will be ok in a while."

Ida and Stella knew that they had not been worked on but were still anxious to begin.

After the meal we talked about what we had done and the thoughts of tinkering with their brains did not bother the women too much. Ida was done first. We encouraged her healing and her empathy. Both already worked but were not strong. Stella was the same but had the potential to be a much better healer. By three in the afternoon we were done. The ladies now knew a fabricated story they could tell the family while the real secret had to be kept. In any case, they had to hurry away to prepare meals for their families. Both Stella and Ida stayed with us.

I went to my bags and brought out two packages and handed them to the women. Ida said, "What is this for?"

"We feel hemmed in the same way you and Stella do. If you take the strattera it will block some of your abilities but also keep people out of your mind." Ida just stared at me and the packages. She had no idea what they could do for her.

Ellen began our meal. Kim and I talked to the two women to teach them how to use their abilities. They had tried to heal since they were young. Some of the procedures they used were correct but some did nothing at all.

All of us sat down to eat and Herb said, "Hi Ida, Stella."

Stella said, "Hello Herb. What were you doing today?"

"Mainly thinking and laying on my back. I don't get to do much of that usually. University life is hectic if you really want to learn."

"I'll take your word for it. We never went past grade ten."

"At one time, it wasn't necessary. What are the two of you doing these days?"

"We both work at Perfect Printers. Why do you ask?"

"First of all are the jobs good?"

"Not really, they just pay fair."

"I was asking because we were going to set up a group home in this city. Some mothers and children would come here but many more would come from other cities. The mothers can work at a small assembly plant and live in the homes provided."

"That sounds great but I never heard of a place like that around here."

"There isn't. The city, province and perhaps even the federal government have to be contacted. We already talked to a lot of lawyers."

"It sounds like you are into big business. Are you that rich?"

"Most companies work on borrowed money so they can write off all of the interest payments. We don't have to put up that much cash."

"What are you going to make?"

"Some laboratory equipment to start. It really doesn't matter. The idea was to get women and children that are in danger from themselves or others to a safe home. Those people need help and I just happen to know three people that could work for the company that could heal the group without making too many waves."

"You mean us? We can't do anything much."

"Neither of you know how strong you will be in a week. I want you two in a safe environment where you can help others."

"It sounds like it's mainly for charity."

"It is to start. The company pays wages which are good for the economy. You get to help people and test out your empathy and your healing ability. We get a tax writeoff and a safe place to put people we find."

Ida answered, "We can't do something like that. It's way too big."

"The two of you can work at it as our consultants. People will come that will run it."

"We might be able to help but we're not educated and can't help much."

Herb described the plan we came up with. The pack had worked on it to improve on the details. The city had an industrial park and we were going to buy one or more lots. Another possibility was to purchase an existing structure or two.

Nearby we would construct a subdivision for the workers. People could walk to work but the homes we would own. The buildings would be rented out to people we figured were in distress.

Ida said, "This would still cost you millions. Do you have that kind of money?"

"We formed a corporation with many members. The money is available."

Pack members would run the business and police the homes. The policing would be necessary because we wanted the families to cause as little problems as possible. Some of the members may be given the gift of healing. In enough time this esper ability would be studied and nobody would be forced to be lab rats. This would trigger the signing into laws of statutes that would protect espers.

With healing then being a common ability then we could introduce other esper abilities and revise the laws that had just been introduced. Compulsion would be the one of our abilities that would get us into the most trouble if it became known. Mind reading would be a close second. Here laws to protect the public had to be draughted but only after the secret was found.

This meant esper police and esper judges that had to hear the cases. Our existing judicial system was a cash cow for many people and these were the same people that usually got elected to make more laws. We had to go slow but push hard when it was necessary.

We stayed only two more days because we had to get back to school. The three women were showing signs of healing. We read Rose's thoughts about her husband. She was going to hold his cock and see what she could do to put some new life in the old weapon. None of us were against this and we could not broach the topic because we would have to admit that we could read minds.

We were back at school for three days when Angie phoned us.

She said, "Hi Piper."

"Hi Angie. I guess this call means that Mark is going to be released."

There was a pause and she said, "You're right. You asked me to call. I can't get over how you can deduce so many things so quickly."

"I mentioned that it would be easier on Mark if he came directly here."

"I talked to Bert about it and he agrees. He even went so far as to say that you could have some extra time. He said three months may not be enough to get all the drugs out of his system."

"You're right.

Herb went with me the next day. We met Angie and Bert in the hospital. Bert handed me a manilla envelope and said, "Here are all the papers you wanted signed."

"Thanks Bert. This is going to be tough on all of us. Mark already feels he is dying but it's his body reaction to its need for drugs."

"I heard about that. He's been transferred to the drug rehab unit."

"Did Adam try to bring him anything?"

"Adam would not allow himself to be searched so he did not get in. I didn't think he was in trouble like Mark."

"He isn't as bad. Perhaps seeing his younger brother going through all these problems may straighten him up. Sadly only 20% find the power to kick the addiction."

"You promised that Mark would be cured."

"He will always be an addict but he simply will not be able to take the drugs. It's the best we can do now unless we find a way to switch the addiction off. The possibility exists."

"I never heard of this research."

"We are doing it in the lab."

"The school?"

"No, my own experiments and those of some researchers I hired."

"You hired researchers?"

"What's so hard to understand? The goal is to help Mark and people like him. This information also goes under the secrecy agreement we made."

"Ok, but how much does this cost? I can pay some."

"No thanks Bert. We'll write the expenses off and possibly patent a procedure that will make a lot of money."

We picked up Mark and there was a fight right away. The boy wanted to go home and dive into his small stash of drugs. Angie already knew of it and disposed of the material.

All of us drove to our home and Mark was shown his room. He also saw four of the security personnel lifting weights or trying to kill each other in a karate match.

The university students would tutor Mark and also watch that he did not sneak out. Pack members would do the same thing. The difference though was that we were going to perpetuate the kung fu myth. There would be priests as well as ninjas. This would explain how we did many of our tricks and give a now fourteen-year-old boy a focus to work from.

Mark was lead away by Duane, a boy that happened to be a thirteen-year-old pack member. He was dressed in the appropriate robes as seen on the television show. Already Mark was looking beyond his pain at the new world he was seeing.

Angie said, "Did you redecorate because of our son?"

"Yes, and it was fun. We have kung fu accountants, kung fu former street children and even two kung fu babies."

Angie put her hand up to her face and tried to suppress a smile. "That sounds delightful."

"It is. Jessica and Stan are now trying to speak in Mandarin to us. They even changed their names. Their best friends now are university students that know the language."

Bert said, "They can speak Chinese?"

"They are learning so the two hams can stay in character."

I got the stare that I usually got when they did not understand.

It took Duane a few days to get all of Mark's secrets. The new pack member was testing out his new abilities to see what he could find. Duane was being tested too so he tried to be as accurate as possible. Duane's intelligence has only started to grow as did his abilities but he had to start somewhere.

Mark was an addict and always would be one but his intake of drugs had not been that much yet. There was more work to be done in his brain but we wanted to do it when has brain had more of a chance to rid itself of the drugs.

Mark tried to escape seven times but always found Duane sitting on the floor in the lotus position. The last time Mark screamed, "I want to leave here. I can't take it anymore."

Duane knew we would critique his work so he said with his hands hidden within the cuffs of his robe, "I am sorry Cricket but that is not permitted."

"You can't hold me here. It's against the law."

"I have told you that we are fulfilling the wishes of your parents."

"They can't lock me up."

"They are doing what is best for you."

Mark tried to rush by and Duane shot to his feet. Mark tried to run into the slightly smaller boy and bounced back as if he hit a wall. Duane had use his shield and braced it against the walls behind him.

Mark shook his head and raced ahead again and hit the shield at least a metre away from Duane. At this distance the shield would yield more. When Mark fell this time, he crumpled into a ball and cried. Duane felt pity on the boy and helped him back to his room.

Duane laid the boy on a mat on the floor and sat with him. His hand reached out and pulled the hair away from Mark's face but Mark's hand came up but Duane's hand had retreated.



-------

Chapter 9


Twelve days after Mark arrived, he came to our gym. We were prepared and the boy saw an illusion of five old Chinese men dressed in silk robes. They spoke Mandarin. Over the last few days we pushed thoughts directly into his head so that when he heard the sounds, he knew roughly what was said.

Duane and Chuck, another new pack member, were fighting. When one would fall, one of the old men would critique what was done right and wrong by each.

The illusion of the oldest man said to Duane, "Why did you not fly?"

"I am very new to the temple, Master. I have worked diligently to learn this ability but as yet I have very poor results."

"Try again but levitate yourself and defeat your opponent."

"I will try my best, Master."

Duane and Chuck were well aware of Mark and fought so the boy could see the majority of the moves. Chuck rose into the air and tried to kick Duane in the face but Duane rose too and his feet intercepted those of his opponent. The two did not fall down though. The continued to strike at each other until they hit the ceiling. They struck each other so that they flew away from each other. When the came down they did so quickly but their bodies righted themselves before they hit the mats. They immediately ran at each other and struck as quick as they could.

Mark stood there with his mouth open. He thought this was a drug induced delusion but realised that it could not be. The blows were quick and deadly. He had seen Bruce Lee movies but the two boys were much faster. Duane struck Chuck in the chest and the boy was flung backwards. His body struck the cement foundations and crumbled them. This was another illusion that Jessica was providing.

Seconds later Chuck struck Duane and he flew up and hit the ceiling then the wall behind him. In the process he destroyed a rack of wooden handled spears.

The illusionary old man said, "Enough," but the mental command was much greater. The two stood and bowed to their elder.

The old master critiqued the styles again. He talked of good and evil and how evil always had to be challenged or it would win by default. The old man radiated both love and an iron hand.

All of a sudden the old man turned to Mark. The boy did not know what to do and chose to flee. He ran to his room and hid in a corner.

Five minutes later when Mark got control of himself and Duane entered the room. Mark quickly looked for the old man.

Duane said, "Master Luo would not harm you. We are here to help."

"You were like in the movies but faster."

"Perhaps I was but I am a simple trainee. My skills are very inferior when compared to one of the Masters."

"You flew!"

"It is one of the many obligations I must master."

"But nobody can fly!"

"Did your eyes deceive you?"

In a quieter voice, he said, "I don't think so."

"Then I flew with great difficulty and with poor form. This proves that your assumption is false, Cricket."

"But you can't do that."

"You saw the truth but you refuse to believe. Is that not the same as what I have been telling you before? The drugs still hold your brain. You have to fight your cravings and subsume yourself to the Way."

"It's so hard!"

"I realise that. What in life, that is worthwhile, is easily attained?"

Mark hung his head. He felt defeated. Duane said, "Come, I will show you how to kick. Perhaps one day you will gain the wisdom to fly."

Mark slowly found a crutch, as good as religion that helped him fight his cravings.

Angie and then both her and her husband Bert were able to see their youngest child working with some children. They were just as old as Mark. They fought in the ways reminiscent of the television show. Mark was the star attraction though and he was put through his paces. He fought hard and worked up a good sweat. He was struck but always got up and continued.

Bert said to us, "That is not like Mark at all. He never worked that hard at anything. How did you do it?"

He was not just talking about the physical activity because they had talked to his tutors. Each of the tutors were university students that were specialising in the courses that Mark was taking. In all the cases, they gave positive responses. Mark had changed but the changes would take time to be built upon.

I said, "We did nothing but provide him something to believe in. We'll have to do something much later because he is still an addict and always will be. We have not unravelled enough information from our DNA yet to find a way to negate this craving."

Angie said, "I did some research of my own on the net. Gene therapy is in its infancy. What you're saying is far beyond what anybody else has done."

"You're right. There are hundreds of conditions related to faulty genes. We have ways of dealing with some of them already. Sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis are being worked on now by us. I think we have made some headway but not any nearer a cure yet."

Bert said, "Where are your research facilities?"

He was thinking that we may be pulling these out of our hat so I said, "We have a research clinic in Toronto. This clinic is starting a subsidiary here in Ottawa. It was in the news just a few months ago."

Both had not read the article but it made no difference. "It was in the March third issue of the local paper."

The clinic would eventually be tied into Apex University. The board of governors at that university had worked hard to bring their standards up but it was not enough. The third warning had gone out and this meant a year to shape up or close down. They could still be a school but nobody would give any serious attention to a person with a diploma from the institution.

We were monitoring the staff at Apex. Many saw the handwriting on the wall and were planning on leaving at the end of this semester. Two thirds of the value of a school was tied up in the people working for the institution. If they left, the value would plummet.

Janet Cullis was warming up to the idea of us taking over the school but our offer was contingent on the staff remaining. We knew that the offer would be accepted just before the teaching staff talked of or actually turned in their resignations.

The number of students was falling even more and so far there were few new students slated to enrol. This would hurt the cash starved university even more.

We had been obliged to loan the Cullis board a further three hundred and seventeen million. The money went to building repairs and upgrades in a last ditch attempt to save the school. It did not seem to work. The government regulators felt it was not enough.

We could hasten the school's demise but we were not dealing with criminals here. They had even used some of our suggestions to good advantage but it was not enough.

Bert did not doubt my word but it was still hard to understand how a group of four students were able to do what I said we were doing. He still had not been given any information about a group that had threatened the politicians. We had cut back in our attack on them and concentrated on the next layer of criminals.

Bert asked, "How is this research clinic so successful?"

I had to grin and said, "We give them ideas and they try them out. They give us the data they found and we work with the researchers to find new ideas."

"So it's you that is doing this?"

"Not just me. We all work at it. Actually there are a lot more than just four of us that contribute."

"You're a take charge type of lady so you must be in charge."

"Does it matter who's in charge? A team needs somebody to guide them so they keep focussed. This could be done by a committee."

Angie said, "Are you really working on curing drug addiction?" She looked at me as I frowned. "I mean how far along are you?"

"I know it's hard to believe but it's true. We're doing better than most other research institutions but I'm afraid the cure would be years off if then. Some mysteries are just too convoluted to be solved even in one lifetime."

The parents went home with a mixed feeling. They were happy with their son's educational and physical health but were wondering about what the pack was doing. They didn't really think that we could do anything. The information I had told them before that suggested that I had some method of knowing the unknowable was suppressed by their own minds. The same thing was going on in Mark's mind because he did not see anybody flying now and was not sure he ever did.

There were a fair number of graduate students and students ready to graduate from the University of Ottawa. We had talked to literally a thousand of them during the last few semesters. These were the ones that we had winnowed from the general population that could benefit the pack.

Since coming here our group had grown quickly. Up until now our group had chosen a hundred and thirty two individuals to be elevated. A week after their induction, their grades had shot up. There was a lot of training before them.

A further four hundred and seven students were being monitored. The qualities of those that we wanted for pack were not that easy to find. To raise an individual and have that person go rogue would possibly destroy us.

Brandon had similar numbers to what we had done. More people had been sent to us from various pack members for evaluation. In most cases we accepted them on a trial basis. The rest would have to remain in support positions. It was like the military. There were only so many pilots and it took many more people to see that the planes stayed in the air.

Janet Cullis capitulated near the mid portion of May. She had really been doing so all along in small ways. The price we had offered her was a lot less than what had originally been tabled. She now knew that major portions of the teaching staff were leaving. Her attempts at locating new professors was not enough. None of the good professors wanted to be associated with an institution that was going down the tubes. She was in a catch-22 position. I sympathised with her but I was not going to help.

We had been searching for good teaching staff too and with the money we offered, we were much more successful. My personal plans revolved around the Pharmacology section of Apex. All of us wanted our masters degree and it was possible for us to get it in two semesters because we knew the university would work with us.

It took until the end of May to get the deal finally hammered out. It was such a short time only because we had layed out so much of the conditions and then appraised the board of what the teaching staff would be doing.

When the papers were signed, I felt sorry about Janet's loss. I said, "You did a good job but there were just too many problems facing you.

She said, "Most I could handle but not the theft and outright fraud."

"I know." When I got her away from the lawyers and the board members I added, "We can get some of the funds back but the restitution is not going to help you. I'm afraid that half of the board members were in on it. Your sons were some of the greediest."

"They couldn't."

I handed her a USB drive full of information and said, "The proof is here. Your lawyers are loyal to you but they would still talk to your sons."

She was very worried. "Are you going to prosecute?" She was worried about the family name.

"That's the most ethical path to follow. We could also come to an agreement where they paid back what they stole. If that happens we feel obliged to give most of it to you. This just means that they get the money back from your will."

She thought for a moment and then said, "What are you going to do?"

"We will go with the second option. We'll leave it to you to decide how your will is to be written."

"Thank you."

We went after the professors, the heads of departments and the board members. We could not expect all the money to come back but two hundred million was possible.

We had to follow the rats that had deserted the sinking ship and went to other institutions. Pack members and lawyers talked to each of them. Prosecution was deferred if they signed a statement of fact and sent the money to the university as if it were a donation. There were some irrational people and prosecution was the only choice.

We all gained our bachelors degrees. The female pack members were now given tuition free courses in Apex which they all excepted. Many others were presented with the same gift. The dorms filled even in the summer months.

With the change in ownership, the government accrediting body gave us some additional leeway. We filled out a five year strategic plan. Some of it was smoke and mirrors but we did pour the money to the school. Some of this money went to construction of larger and better buildings that we would shift over too when they were completed.

Some of the deadwood at the school was let go. We needed numbers to swell the ranks of the teaching bodies, so they would stay. Some of the better teachers, we were able to draw back. Some of the professors that had dipped into the kitty and retired found they were now employed again but had nothing to do. We just needed their name for a year or two until we got on our feet. Some researchers were given jobs to teach and some professors that were better at research went that route.

Female pack members were now made assistant professors but in actuality were taking the jobs of the professors. Usually a university professor was working with good students to do research. The research was now done by the pack and certain individuals would take the credit like our family would.

The male pack members now went to a new campus but ostensibly under the auspices of Apex. The new buildings were being built seventeen kilometres from the girls school and on the other side of the city. It would take a few years to get them built so we used rental space to teach.

The girls were segregated so there should not be any sudden flight of students. The strategic plan would change once Apex was known as a leading educational institution. Coed was the way to go and perhaps we could even encourage some parents of foreign students to risk their daughter's virtue if they gained a much more valuable education.

We had spent all of the money we solicited from the Columbians and used more of our own. Apart from Apex, our assets totalled close to four billion dollars. Half of it was hidden but since the assets were owned by our own multinational corporations then we paid little tax. This was not fair to the average tax payer in Canada. We had plans for doing something about it but only if we could get all of the countries to modify their tax laws.

More money was spent in Orillia. The figures we knew would be very high because the younger members wanted something special. In this case it meant expensive.

There had to be a lot of deals struck with various levels of government. Much of this was financial. The money was necessary to the completion simply because of the high cost. Other organisation would look for assistance and we not only wanted to act normal, we needed all the assistance we could get to complete this project. The governments looked at it as a make-work project that could possibly lower the cost of living if the ideas were followed.

The younger members of the pack always wanted a challenge. Long before we chose to build in Orillia, Bobby was working on a habitat. He wanted an underground city. It would be horrendously expensive but that meant that it was only a further challenge.

When we decided on Orillia, the younger ones looked to find a way of applying their building plan so it meshed with our needs. They gave us seven ways to proceed. Each one had it's costs and benefits. The time to completion was as much as seven years but portions would be ready in as little as a year and a half.

We had in mind a hexagonal ring of homes facing a park. Around it would be roads with other similar hexagons. Cars would be outlawed and the roads were for service vehicles and deliveries. Bicycles, handcarts and walking was what we wanted. Any cars would be parked far away form any home. Small businesses would form hexagons of their own and larger industries would have their own hexagon if necessary.

The youngsters figured that they could excavate a large area and build windowless homes made out of concrete. They would be connected to concrete covered pathways. When this was built and the cement dried, the area would be backfilled. The air to enter the complex in the winter would be partially heated by the warm air that was expelled.

Light would be captured by computer controlled mirrors and the energy would be directed to one of the collectors. The light would be carried by fibre optics to the homes and to the public areas within the habitat. Photovoltaic cells and wind turbines would be used to supplement the electric usage.

Their ambitious project had little chance of success because of the cost and the time involved. Joy likened this project to a spaceship. Missy and Dina then expanded on this to such an extent that the pack wanted to build the complex. It was the same as the super hero uniforms and now the kung fu. In any event, the pack now wanted this type of construction.

Ida, Stella and Rose visited us in Ottawa to get more training. They found that they could heal or heal better and wanted to improve their skills. Greg, Jeff, and six women came too. The males did not know that we were the cause of the changes in the women but they sure knew that they could heal.

The family met us at the farm we had purchased when we moved to Ottawa. By now it was in good shape.

They pulled up to the house and quickly got out of their cars. Stan, Jessica and even Jordan went to them. The youngest doing this with a lot of feigned difficulty.

The children were picked up and the guests walked to us. We hugged each other and I could feel in them that they were glad to be here. Everybody here had been healed by the three healers in one way or another.

Everybody eyed Ellen because she was nearly due. Jacqueline said, "Ellen, you look radiant."

"I feel that way. This second crop of babies are not giving me the problems I had with the others. Though having four at once has its own problems."

"I can guess. I'd have trouble with twins."

The women got into talk of babies and Greg said to Herb, "This is a beautiful home. The pictures you sent don't do it justice."

Herb smiled and said, "I had a hand in how it was altered and then decorated but I knew enough to stay out of the womenfolk's way."

We went for a tour of the farm. Pack members and students were everywhere but there were not that many present.

Jeff said, "Who are all these people?"

Herb replied, "All of them are students. Some go to university and some are not there yet. The older ones teach the younger and we have some great successes."

Jeff said, "What do you mean?"

"Some of the children we found on the street. We gave them a home and found mentors to help them with their problems and get an education. All of them are being home schooled by us. Others were helped and sent to public schools. Some have tested out two years ahead of their peers and now have their high school diplomas."

Greg said, "Street children! What about their families?"

"We skirted the law for a while Greg. Some children were just disturbed and their family was doing all they could. We keep the parents appraised of what is happening but they do not know exactly where their children were."

"That's illegal, Herb. You know better."

"They are not held here. They can run or just leave at any time they want. Some of them saw the error of their ways and talk to their parents about their problems on a regular basis. In most cases the parents now actively support us. There are other cases where the child comes from a dysfunctional family. The same thing happens but in many cases the children are not wanted back. We encourage the children to communicate."

"There are government institutions that help children. You may do a better job but there is no oversight."

Herb said, "The youngest you'll find is sixteen. Most of those we found were segregated by age and gender into groups of eight. They sleep, eat, exercise and study together. They also protect each other. Nobody is going to easily coerce a boy or a girl to do something they do not want to do."

"That's fine with me but not with the government. Some old biddy will report you and you'll be in a world of hurt."

Herb smiled and said, "We've been talking with the Provincial Attorney General, and the Minister of Health and Welfare. We're in the process of getting some recognition like we are for the work we're trying to do in Orillia. They both tie together. The various levels of government will see a good return on their money."

"What have they said so far?"

"They are in favour or what our corporation is doing. Inspectors have been out and more will arrive to do more in depth analysis. We figure there is still a three month wait simply because of bureaucracy."

"Well there is nothing for me to worry about then. A lot of people came to the city council to talk about whatever you're doing. They are talking very big money. Stella told me but I can't see how this is going to work."

"All it does is remove at risk single mother families from the larger urban centres and puts them in smaller cities like Orillia. They work at whatever jobs we can provide. The mothers and older children work and pay taxes. The government and the corporation help with daycare. The city provides mass transit. We open up a neighbourhood mall to provide jobs and the necessities of life."

"That is going to make this corporation you're talking about a good profit?"

"It provides a way of deferring taxes and avoiding a lot of them. You can look at it as a way to put our money to help the public instead of giving it to the government."

"They always get what they want."

"No they don't. We make sure all the loopholes are closed as does the government."

Jessica said, "You talk about money but we have a dojo."

Rose who was holding the child said, "What's a dojo?"

"Like a gym where we practice our karate. Mom says I'm a baby ninja."

"What's a ninja Jessica. I don't know all this stuff."

"A secret agent that knows how to fight. We can beat Daddy once in a while."

Everybody looked at Herb and he blushed. I explained, "It's three to one. I fight but I can't always win. They tickle. If you don't believe me have Greg or Jeff take them on."

Rose said, "You must play too rough."

"Not me. They know the ninja techniques."

I took the menfolk off to see the fields and Ellen took the women into the house to talk about healing.

Ellen said to the women, "We do not have lots of time. Are all of you comfortable with what was done to Rose, Ida and Stella?"

While she listened to the verbal replies, we dug into their minds to see if they had too many qualms about doing this. There would always be some but these women were not hesitant at all about this.

"Ok, then we have to have some time to do this. Tomorrow we are going shopping but we are going someplace where we can be alone."

We went to a musical and then to a nice restaurant. We talked a lot that night and planned on a shopping excursion the next day.

The women and Jeff's son Michael went with us to the house near the University of Ottawa and saw the dojo. They also had a chance to sit with six more pack members. The six women were altered as good as they could to increase their empathy and healing powers. We were always learning more about ourselves so we did better than what had been done the last time.

Kim, Ellen and I worked on Rose, Ida and Stella to fine tune what they could do. When we were all done, our three were shown new techniques that could be used to help people. When we said that our children had the same power, Jacqueline wanted the same for her son Michael. She attributed how well our children did to the healing we must have performed on them.

The students in the dojo usually received small injuries in the course of their sparing. The three women then had a chance to heal their patients without having to hide what they did. The students didn't mind because we usually healed them ourselves. It took a while to see results but bleeding stopped immediately. The students were thankful but it was not anything new to them. The six women including Jacqueline were very impressed.

We talked about the people that would arrive in Orillia and how they had to be treated. After another discussion on security, we went out shopping like we were supposed to be doing.

-------

We had our plans for the men because they would have to learn more about our place in the way the women were able to heal. We knew a chance would come up because both men were still very interested in us.

Herb was showing Greg and Jeff the new barn which contained nothing but gym equipment for children. Herb said, "The kids have a chance to let off a little steam even when its cold or wet outside."

Jeff said, I have friends that have farms. This building has to be worth a hundred thousand dollars and that does not include the equipment."

"Actually it was a little more because of the thicker insulation, the solar heating and the wind turbines."

"That only emphasises what I was going to say. You love all three children. You could do this even if they were not your own but I think they are."

Herb knew this was coming and said, "Let me talk about something first if you don't mind. When we were going to university, Piper taught archery, karate and judo. You already must have heard how she can use a gun."

The two men knew this but said nothing. "You also know how smart Piper, Kim and Melissa are."

It was only when he paused a bit that Jeff said, "We know that."

"Good, we have one starting point established. I was going to have a discussion with you two when the women were gone and now's a good time." Both men didn't know what this was about.

"The Stewart clan is pretty lucky. Some of the people seem to be able to heal others with just their minds." I went on for a few minutes listing people that had this ability and those that got healed. There were a lot of old stories about this that had collected for the last few hundred years.

Both men knew these stories but perhaps not in this detail. Greg had gone over the details more when he found that he had been healed. I went on, "Besides the people that went into medicine there were those that gravitated to law enforcement. They could listen to a person and detect if they were lying or not."

Both men were now uncomfortable because this separated them from the rest of humanity. Greg said, "It is nothing more than watching facial characteristics and posture. Sometimes it's the way the voice changes."

"I do not dispute that in the least but both of you have an ability to know when somebody is lying. We can call it empathy if you want."

Jeff said, "What has this to do with the children?"

"I said I was getting to it. I do not mean to make you uncomfortable. You are my best friends apart from the girls."

"Ok, go on."

"You both have a rare mental condition that lets you find someone that's lying to you. It's one of the things heard about when we talk about ESP."

Greg said, "That stuff is all bullshit. There's no such thing."

"Sorry Greg but there is ESP and I have it now."

Greg's eyes got big and he said, "What do you mean?"

"I was born with the latent ability to heal. I also have what the two of you have. I can tell bullshit from the truth."

Jeff said, "What did you mean by 'you have it now'?"

"Now we go back to Piper and Kim. Both of them are like some of our people. They have the ability to heal and they are empathetic. They can put their hands on a sick person and encourage their body to work harder to repair any damage."

Greg said, "That's bullshit."

"Do you remember when the bus missed the curve?" Both men nodded. "We worked hard to help those. If you remember, you would know that the doctors were amazed that many survived and everyone that the girls or I treated, recovered much more quickly."

Jeff said, "I heard about that too. Some of our folks figured it was you and Ellen."

"It was but it was also Piper and Kim. Jeremy Helstrom was one of those treated. He also had bladder cancer. His treatments were delayed because of his injuries but when they looked, his cancer was gone."

Greg said, "Are you saying Piper cured cancer?"

Instead of answering directly, I said, "Our family searches out people that are very sick but we tend to prefer children. We work on them for a while and their body fights whatever is bothering them. We did so well that the Hospital for Sick Children had an investigation to see what was happening."

The two men thought on this and Herb just sat on a swing. It took five minutes before Greg said, "So you can cure any disease?"

"Not all with one treatment, some are more difficult. They require up to seven treatments but we also have to get them before the disease got too far. Sometimes all we can do is let them die."

The two men were quiet again. Greg finally said, "How did you get this ability? It was never that strong in our family."

"Now we are coming to the nexus. Piper and Kim have a super healing ability. They healed me and encouraged my ability to grow. They did the same to Ellen and you have seen what happened. She worked on herself and so did her four mates."

Jeff burst out, "Four mates!"

"Sure, but let's stay on the topic. Ellen and I are healed in such a way that we are then as strong as Kim and Piper in our ability to help others. Now we go back a bit. When Piper, Kim and Jess went through Orillia they were being chased by some bad people. That is still a verboten topic so don't ask more about it. They were on the run."

The men desperately wanted to know more but I continued with my explanation. "I was treating a patient that was involved in a car accident. When we raced to the hospital, I came close to Kim and Piper. They felt something very special. They left, but for the next few months, the feeling bothered them a lot until they had to come and find me. They could even see my face in their mind without ever seeing me."

Greg said, "I don't believe that."

"There's more. They found me and all of a sudden I felt a link to the two sisters. I think most of it was because they had this ESP ability to make their minds work better. Anyway I fell in love with girls that would put me in jail if I did anything about it."

Jeff said, "So the children are yours?"

"They certainly are. Now we go back to the first set of points we talked about. The two girls are smart, resourceful, they can heal and we have this type of link. I tried to resist them but I had no choice in the matter. They wanted children and they wanted me to be the father."

The two men were quiet for a while and then Greg said, "You're smarter now than you were as a boy. You were good then but now its different."

"That's true too. I was outgunned so to speak. Anyway, I was healed a lot and you see what happened. You know what our children are like. Ellen was healed a lot and she got smarter and younger. She found four young men that were given our ability. They love her and she wanted children. She got what she wanted."

We walked around the farm in quiet until Greg said, "Would Piper and Kim do this to us too?"

"I know for a fact that they would. They already know that they can strengthen your empathy and allow you to heal too."

There was another pause then he said, "What do they do?"

They hold your body or at least get close. There are dormant areas in our minds that have to be simulated to grow. The cells specialise and you can heal."

"Any catch to this?"

"To get good at these abilities, you have to come back and get another session. You may even need a third. As for a string attached, it's that you say nothing to anybody about what you are capable of doing. Think what would happen to Piper and Kim then about my children."

"I wouldn't talk about that. In fact, I'd be afraid to. They'd lock me up or send me to some government place and never see the light of day again."

"That's what we are afraid of so we hide when we heal."

Greg said, "Is that how you are curing schizophrenia?"

"We just use our intelligence and our research to find that out. Intelligence can increase with the healing but it is also dependant on age. I'm smarter because I stated young enough that I got this way. My wives work on me all the time and this improved me too. You guys may get smarter too but not like the girls or the babies."

There was a lot more questions but they were put off for a while. We continued to talk on matters as if I were doing farming for a living.

Bobby came to the farm and ran to us. He was big now and I grabbed him in the air and swung him around. After a hug I said, "I'm glad you're here Bobby. This crotchety looking man is my Uncle Greg and the other is my cousin Jeff. He's also my best friend."

Bobby had an infectious smile and said, "Hello Uncle Greg. I'm very happy to meet you. We've heard stories about you." He stuck out his hand and Greg's ability let him know that he was being put on."

"Hello Bobby. We've heard about a very bright boy of the same name. Do you know where he is?"

Bobby rolled his eyes and said, "I thought I'd be world famous by now but they do not even recognise me."

I said, "Bobby is as close to being a son as Stan and Jordan. He's been healed by quite a few people over the last few years and he's a lot smarter than me. He's also a pain in the ass when he wants something. Then again sons have that right."

Bobby hugged me one handed and then extended his hand to Jeff and said, "Hi Cousin Jeff. I see that you two can separate fact from fiction."

"You can tell?"

"Certainly. I'm not only cute and loveable but I can do the same thing as you guys."

"Hi Bobby. I've learned a lot of things today and I can almost see the link between you two."

"Really? That means you have a strong talent."

"Thanks. I started today thinking I have a rare gift and then I learn that it is not so rare at all."

"Oh, it is rare. I wouldn't be talking this way unless you two were family and because it felt right to do so."

Jeff said, "Then you must have a very strong talent if you can make that kind of decision so easily."

"The feeling I have is so strong I know it's a fact."

Greg said, "Have you thought about going into law enforcement? Since you're in the family, you must know it's a tradition."

"That may be fun but I'm going into engineering."

Jeff asked, "What branch?"

"I want to build from the very small to the very big. So I have to go into all fields."

I said, "When we get in the house, you can see the designs Bobby and his sisters made. Those are the ones we plan to put in place in Orillia."

The two men did not really believe this but we said nothing. They walked back to the house as I needlessly asked Bobby about those that had arrived with him.

The girls were having a shower when we arrived, so I got out the plans for the complex the government was most likely to accept. I said, "Bobby, why don't you show them some of the details?"

After another grin, I laid out the plans and Bobby went into the kinds of details needed to explain what he was doing as if he were talking to another engineer. When the two got lost, Bobby dropped the jargon and explained himself so they would understand. The curious features of the habitat were explained and it was Jeff who noticed that the round doors were reminiscent of what the hobbits used.

He only got part way through when I was attacked again by Joy, Missy, as well as Amanda and Kayla. They were two of the younger newcomers. I introduced the four of them as daughters and both men could see the love here too. After the introductions, the men found out that all of them had been working on the plans for the habitat.

Bobby said, "We'd like to build a space ship one day providing we could find a power source and adequate shielding."

The men were amused until Joy said, "You might think this idea as impossible and not just highly unlikely. None of us have an IQ of less than a 180. We are still children in a few of the ways we act but we are not fools. Tell me how many nine to thirteen year-olds could have designed what you see laid out on paper?"

Greg said first, "I'm sorry Joy. You're right. I forgot for a moment what you're capable of. You're young and idealistic and that may be your armour. People just as smart and probably better trained have not been able to do what you want. I will say that you have just as much chance as those others."

"Your apology is accepted Uncle Greg. We should not have made such blanket statements. The fact is that we are working on the power source and the shielding now."

Jeff was a SiFi buff and said, "What could give you enough power?"

Joy said, "Are you familiar with the fact that the universe is made up of many more dimensions than we can detect?"

"I've heard that."

"We feel that gravity comes from a different combinations than the three we see. Those other dimensions we believe have a very high potential compared to our lowly three. If we can tap those, we would have unimaginable power."

Greg said, "Isn't that one of your blanket statements?"

Bobby said, "You do not know how your mind lets you know a person is telling a lie. We think that it is our minds that function within more than three dimensions. We cannot detect psionic waves but they have to exist if we can heal. We were told that all energy is within the electro magnetic spectrum but we know this is not true. Gravitronic waves do not fit either. Surely with these two exceptions, you could postulate the existents of multiple dimensions?"

It took a while then Greg said, "I never learned any of that stuff. It's hard to understand."

"I know its hard to understand but the important thing to know is that we are trying."

-------

We got back later after stopping for lunch in the city. I knew who was visiting so we hurried. When we got home, there was a lot of hugging before I made the introductions.

There were many conversations going on at once but most were mental. Bobby picked up his cue when prompted and he said, "Piper, Cousin Jeff has a strong ability."

Every verbal conversation stopped and I replied, "You're right Bobby."

Ellen said, "What did you guys talk about when we were gone?"

Herb was the one to say, "The Stewart ability to detect a lie but I completed it by telling how I was captured by you two."

"Oh, so they know now. It's better that way." I paused theatrically and then said, "Did you offer to help them bring out their talent?"

Herb replied, "Actually I did but I wanted to talk first."

I looked at the two men and gave them a smile and said, "All your lives you've had to hide your ability. I hope you know that with more power, you're going to have to find ways of hiding it even more."

Jeff looked at Jacqueline. He had not told her much about any gift and let her think it was just deductive reasoning. His wife knew the look herself and said, "I learned a lot about the family I married into. I was a skeptic until just a few months ago. When something bumps into you hard enough, its difficult to ignore it."

Jeff wanted to increase his ability so now was the time to talk about the women. "Jeff, you have to know by now that some of the Stewart women's natural abilities were increased."

"Yes, we figured that. Uncle Greg's acting ten years younger was one hint. Then I had feelings when we talked and this lead me to believe that the women were talking about this sort of thing. Aunt Rose always held Michael and I could feel the healing being done."

Rose didn't say anything at being caught so I said, "The ladies came here to see if I could help them with their gift. I know that your wife has the ability too."

Jeff looked at Jacqueline and his mind was wondering about this. I said, "Do you want me to help you?"

"Yes I would if you don't mind Piper."

"We may as well start now." I got up and stood behind Jeff but suddenly found myself blocked. All of those that noticed were shocked.

With my hands on Jeff's shoulders I said, "You have another ability just like Herb has."

"Another?"

"You sure do. Herb told you part of the story of how we met but he left out some parts. When he got near us he was worried about the situation we were in and then about Kim and I. His subconscious constructed a mental block. He basically could cut us off. It was a few months before he dropped it for good."

"If I have one of those blocks, I'm not doing it on purpose."

"I know that, Jeff. I'll let you relax and I'll try Uncle Greg. He may have a block too."

I looked at the older man and called, "Stan, Jessica, will you jump up into Uncle Greg's lap?"

I got two eager replies and the two got in place. I said to Greg, "You have two of our babies. I'm trusting you with their lives."

Kim knew what to do too and had Jacqueline hold her husband's hand while Kim held Jacqueline.

Greg said, "Do I have a block too?"

"I don't know. It's a reflex thing. I'm trying to keep you calm so it doesn't get triggered."

"I'll try to relax."

I turned to Rose and said, "Lets heal your man."

Rose had lots of mental questions but she just got up. She was the one that held his hand and I put my hand on Rose's shoulder. I worked slow and talked as I went on. It took longer to do Greg but not a lot. When I finished, I said, "I'm done. Did you feel anything?"

"Nothing at all. Do I have that block thing?"

"I don't know."

Missy was prompted to talk about the city we were proposing. The women were surprised that the children had done the vast majority of the work including making the pile of drawings. They went into a skit of their own. The benefits to the city as well as the inhabitants were put forward as if these were people that had to be convinced to put their backing behind the project.

When Kim gave the silent word, the presentation hurried up until it was completed. We got up to go to our supper and Jacqueline pulled Jeff to his feet. "Get up Honey, you're done."

Jeff took a second to catch on and then said, "I didn't feel a thing."

Kim said, "Jacqueline would be angry if you had a headache tonight. She probably wants to get lucky."

Both of them turned red but it was Jeff that said, "I always bring aspirin with me."

Kim said, "You won't need them any more. You can heal as well."

"I don't feel any different."

"It will take a few days before you can do anything new but the old lie detector will work better right away. In a week it will be at its max. the two of you have to come back for a minor tune up after thirty thousand klicks."

"Both of us?"

"You're not going to think that you can get this and your wife can't?"

"No! I'm just going to have to take a bit longer to get over it."

Ellen had to be assisted out of her chair and said, "If Jacqueline took up nursing, she could start to make a difference and do it easily. She has the Stewart name though and people will draw too many conclusions."

Jacqueline said, "Do you have any suggestions?"

"Work with Ida and Stella with the people that come to the city. Most of them will not know what's wrong with them in the first place. All they will know is that they feel better. If your handsome husband and you applied to be foster parents, then children will come to you. It's rewarding until they have to go."

Rose said, "We did that for ten years but sometimes we were happy to see somebody go."

Ellen said, "Think of what the definition of a healthy person is. If you can encompass the idea that they function within society then you might be able to help their social ills too."

Greg said, "That sounds like some form of control."

"Is society a type of control, Greg?"

He had to work on this. "I think it is."

"A child comes to a doctor with an over active set of glands. They cannot help themselves for the way the are acting. The doctor helps their body bring the glands back into alignment. They now only have to be taught a new way to work within the family and the city. A parent does this all the time."

"Some kids are just bad. They come from a dysfunctional family and will be before the courts all their lives."

"Those one's you cannot reach but you might soften some of their rough edges but that's a form of control."

Rose said, "Jail does that too."

After the meal, the young ones talked about how they healed people without being noticed. These were the times when they were not invisible. The Stewarts would learn from this talk and improvise.

It was later that night that Rose said to Herb, "So you finally admit to helping conceive these three beautiful children."

Stan said, "I heard he was forced into it."

This was a shock to all of us including those in the pack. We had to laugh. Herb wiped away a tear and said, "I was screwed up at the time and didn't understand much. I was fighting myself more than anything else because I absolutely knew where my place in life was."

Kim patted his hand and said, "Your gonads were on our side and the outcome was never in doubt."

This time all of us laughed even harder.

The family went home after a few days. We were testing out again at Apex. I was taking my masters degree in Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry, the same as at the University of Ottawa. Herb, Melissa and Kim had to do the same thing at our old alma mater. All of us were in dual degree programmes. I could do the same thing with them but I wanted to tie the Apex name to mine and bring the school name up.

My thesis had been roughed out over a year ago and all four of us were waiting for the results of the secondary testing by the University of Ottawa. The results as well as our work with Jamieson Clinic would be more than enough to get the degree. There were still some general courses that had to be passed too like a second language but this was easy for any of us.

Dean Addams had been retained and I was just the brightest student in the school but I had relatives that owned a portion of the school. I was treated like a princess but I didn't abuse it.

When the Dean's decisions were in doubt, we had the old school attorney and mine present a simple and legal way for me to gain my masters quickly. We showed how no chicanery would be involved. Since other pack members would be doing the same thing this meeting was important. The Dean was all for the plan and she got her job.

By testing out, I could complete this degree in two semesters. This meant by Christmas break I would be ready to start my PhD. The school did not have a course at this level but they made one exclusively for me. Again with testing out, I could finish this in two more semesters. My dissertation would be on the same topic as the thesis but now I would present new research.

We had assessed all the professors at the school and then did the same thing to those that we hired. Some of these people could fit into our pack. Some were empty nesters and one had a mate suitable for elevation. Geraldine Nibs was the professor that taught Pharmacology at Apex. Her husband John was a lawyer in the city. She was fifty five and he was fifty nine. Their children had moved on and they only tied in with their family on occasion when they got a chance to babysit.

Jamison Clinic contacted Apex and signed a contract with Dean Addams. While I was not writing exams to test out, I would be actually doing work related to my thesis and preparatory work for next year when I wrote my dissertation.

A similar situation was unfolding at the U of O. This time the Jamieson Clinic used Dr Jacques Robillard, the Dean of Medicine, at their university. While the rest of my family unit were testing out, they would be doing the same research as I was doing. We could even write on the same topic for our thesis as long as we put our own slant on what we saw.

Ellen called us when it was time. All of us dropped what we were doing to be at the delivery. Brandon and William left their university in Montreal to be with the mother of their child.

Ellen had to have a caesarian and we were all prepared for this. Herb did the honours. As each child came out. He or she was given to their father to be cleaned. Ellen was in no pain though she felt some discomfort. Her children had started talking earlier than ours and I thought it was because they were so close to each other.

Herb put very neat sutures in and stepped back. Before he commented, Ellen said, "You better make me look good."

"You always looked good. Are you horny yet?"

"You want to be first." Herb blushed because his joke backfired.

Ellen's breasts had been treated to provide enough nourishment. After a few days we knew this was not enough. Brandon and William had each formed a family and one of each of their wives came forward to help feed the children.

The children were perfect and our own children were present to greet their newest family members. The family in Orillia was told about the births a day before it was to happen but none made it down in time. After the fact, Ellen had lots of people arriving to see the babies and meet the fathers.

The healers and empaths all made a point of coming and we used the chance to tinker to fine tune their abilities. They stayed a while to tell us about what they had done and how they had done it. They were as excited about their powers as we were about ours.

A month later Mark had flushed all the drugs from his system. We put a few compulsions on him. The first was the same as every student that learned at our homes. The second one was to get violently sick if they ingested any drugs. The last one was to help him stay away from the drugs in the first place. As a sop to his life in a social gathering, he could drink one beer without being nauseated.

Our trouble was that Mark did not want to go home or to even see his old friends. He had made new friends with us. Mark was of course free to do as he wished and we urged him to go home to visit.

Bert said to me privately, "You did the best job possible. I studied people in Mark's situation and none of them are like that. I now have a son I'm very proud to call my own. He's going to make something out of his life."

"We are proud of him too. We worked extra hard so he won't be hindered in sports or in case he has to fight. I know he won't be looking for fights."

Bert said seriously, "Did you talk to Adam and Cassie?"

"Yes I did. They came over to visit and I think it was Mark that did his best to get them to change. Cassie seems to like one of the students and he likes a girl with spunk. Cassie had to don a new persona or not have a chance."

"Will that work out?"

"I don't think so but Cassie may find another that will encourage her to do better than the mediocre effort she was expending before."

-------

The pack grew much faster now. There were more pack members out there searching for people that had the right traits and were free to join. In many cases it was a non-desirable mate or ineligible children that stopped us from asking. In a few cases we just had to wait until the younger ones could leave their parental control.

Soon we would have no place to meet because our numbers would be too large. Tatum solved the problem by purchasing a resort in British Columbia that could provide shelter for four thousand if we did not mind being friendly. For pack, this was no problem.

Apex U was gaining a name. I published medical articles in six magazines. Nothing was earthshaking and that was the idea. The hook though was that these articles had clues to unlocking other mysteries that would be divulged in subsequent publications.

I had help while doing my research because I kept the children with me. They didn't like the smell, but they loved the idea of finding out something new. Jordan was talking well now and even quoting Shakespeare when he was not doing a running translation into Mandarin. Some of the ideas were lost in the transition but he was working hard to do his best.

I was into my second semester when the news came back from the U of O that the tests on schizophrenia were a great success. The local and the national papers carried the story but only the Dean of Medicine was listed.

When Christmas break came near, I presented my thesis. My test on this lasted a full twelve hours with an hour off for lunch. The verbals were gruesome. I did not want them to be easy so people could not claim I was given what was mine. Geraldine Nibs asked a difficult question though my thesis was not directly related to her speciality.

After a short visit to British Columbia, I came back and began to challenge my doctorate courses and begin work again on the next segment of my life. Herb, Kim and Melissa were doing the same thing as me but they had a harder time of it. They were taking a dual degree program that would get them an MD but also a PhD in a related area. Kim was going to get a degree in Immunology and Melissa in Biophysics. The fact that we published so much was seen as that we were not gaining something we did not deserve.

Jamieson Clinic was doing studies of both our cure and our test materials. If these cleared the hurdles imposed then their licences would be sold to drug companies. Some companies had already come sniffing and one was Stethbridge Pharmaceuticals. Since we owned ten percent of this company, they got the nod to do some of the testing for us.

We knew a lot about Stethbridge because Sheila Knox had worked there. Nicolas had thought the stock was undervalued a year ago and purchased some. The stock price did not rise in the last year because they had no new product to sell. This encouraged us to buy more in the name of our off-shore corporation.

Sheila Knox had finally sold out everything to us even though she had been dead for years. She was still collecting royalties from her discoveries and these still went to us. She may live to be a very old women in the books.

It was important to continually publish and people came to Apex to see the facilities. Having to tell prospective students and parents that the school was bursting at the seams ensured that they would try hard to get enrolled.

The pack was testing out in droves and the non pack teaching staff at the schools were at a loss to how this was happening. Since they got paid, they didn't bitch about it.

The latest group of visitors to the school were from the drug industry and from the people monitoring out accreditation. Both groups was happy with what they saw. I was not singled out as much because the pack was here working with me. Their names had gone out with the published research we had done. The best normals were asked to work with us so they could learn and contribute.

Geraldine Nibs name was with ours. Usually a professor's name was first on the list. If the research was seen as faulty then the professor would suffer for it. The opposite was usually true. This time the professor's name was in an alphabetical list because she only helped.

When the last of the people got in the car and left, Geraldine said, "That went very well. I don't think our accreditation will be in danger now."

"It's going to be more work for us."

"I know. We are going get more grants and find more research staff. This school has changed so fast in the last few months. It certainly is a lot more rewarding to work here."

"You mean fun I think."

"You're right Piper. My name on the research doesn't hurt a bit. This is a very exciting time."

"I'm going to make a prophecy, Geraldine." She looked at me seriously. "Soon you will go into sensory overload and what you feel now will just seem to be a nice diversion."

"Like the way you aren't excited by all this? You look like you knew exactly what was going to happen long before we even started on formulating the experiments. You scare me some times."

"You're not wrong about me but it's not quite what you think. I've had lots of help working on the probable experiments to prove what we have hypothesised."

"It sounds to me like you have worked very far beyond where we are now."

"We have. I think we can cure four more types of schizophrenia. This will mean fifty five percent of the people could not be cured completely."

"Now that is very interesting. Who is this we you are talking about? I don't think it's the students working with you."

"Most of the students are part of this 'we' but there are a lot more. I think its time to ask if you wish to be part of this group."

A lot of thoughts were going through her mind and most were not near the truth. "I'd like to join your group. What you're working on is absolutely fantastic."

"What we have to tell you will be even more exciting. It will change your life so much that we have to involve your husband. He's compatible with us and this will make it much easier on you."

"My husband! How do you know him?"

"My research is not just in the lab. I have to know all about those that work with me. Many people are suitable to join our group but most are encumbered with commitments that do not allow their entrance. You and John don't have that problem. He's an ethical person the same as you. You are both intelligent and hard working."

"What does this group do?"

"You can think of it as a think-tank. We deal with the problems of humanity and try to cure them. Our work on DNA and mental aberrations is just a small part of what we seek to learn about."

"What particular problems are you working on?"

"Our understanding of the mind supercedes anything known. We have opened three new branches of mathematics. We have more than quadrupled all that is known about nearly every branch of physics."

"Your assertions are just so powerful that I have trouble understanding them."

"Or believing them?"

"That too I'm afraid. I have not heard any of this information being published."

"The human race is not ready to have it. Our work here is some of the simpler aspects of what we know or suspect. Our knowledge is not at the technological level but what we believe. Some experiments were conducted to prove certain points. All they do is confirm our hypotheses."

"Why do you want John and me to join? We are not stupid people but we certainly don't sound like we come up to the standards of your group."

"Both of you measure up. The discoveries we make are based on the numbers we have. You would make us incrementally stronger. The experience will be rewarding."

Geraldine thought for a moment and said, "I'd like to join if we can."

"I chose this time to ask because today is Friday. Some of our group is meeting at our home tonight. We have set a room aside for the two of you. You will have so many questions that I know from experience that you will not have finished until Sunday night."

"I definitely want to go and I'll see what I can do to pull John away from his work."

We talked of specifics or our meeting tonight and then about what we were doing at Apex.

That night, John and Geraldine drove up to the farm and parked on the crushed stone where the rest of the cars were parked. The couple were introduced to those present but Geraldine knew many of them from school. John was a distinguished looking man. He was hard working and ethical but that did not stop him from admiring the female flesh. Ethics in our case meant a person being able to control their urges not that they did not have them.

During our meal, John said, "Gerry said that you and your think-tank have made some amazing discoveries. Are you looking for a partner to help market them?"

I had to smile and said, "We formed a corporation and it in turn owns other corporations and portions of still others. Marketing is handled by some very astute people. The partner aspect is not the same as you envision it but the term still applies."

"What could we do to help this group you have? I'm at a loss to see how we could be of benefit."

We talked more but it we were not getting to the point until the meal was finished. We adjourned to another room where a presentation was made about what we knew in mathematics. Nicolas was actually here to do it but usually it was just a video. The Nibs were nice people but actually they were little different than the hundreds of people that had been informed of our offer over the last year.

Physics was next but this was a video. Here we made some assumptions and listed the proofs that linked them together. John was sceptical about all our assertions but not overly so. He knew that the pack as a whole had published a lot of data that was new to mankind.

During the lecture, we slipped the compulsions in that would protect the pack without them noticing. When we were done, John said, "What you have found has earthshaking connotations. I still don't see how Gerry and I fit in."

"I hate to say it but what you just saw is only a small part of what we are or have done. The next part you are going to have difficulty accepting and understanding. We have to ask though if you wish to join us in making our world a better place for everybody to live?"

Geraldine said, "I don't know what I can do but I would feel privileged to be even asked to join your group."

John said, "I too feel privileged but perhaps I feel in awe of what you have done. I will accept membership if I can get it but I don't feel worthy."

"Well consider yourselves members of the pack."

"Pack!"

"That's the best description. One very big family. What sets us apart is that we are all much more intelligent that the rest of humanity. We also have some abilities in ESP. These abilities allow us to combine our thinking processes so we form a super intellect. This is analogous to forming a human mind with the rest of us acting as individual brain cells."

Geraldine said, "That is more earthshattering than what we heard before."

"There's more."

"More?" both said in unison.

"We have mental telepathy and a form of healing so that we can fight off disease and even old age. It's the telepathy that allows us to link together. Here is where you two can add your ideas and experiences. We are almost equal when we're separate."

John said, "Telepathy?"

I pushed to their minds, "Yes, telepathy is not fiction. We use it all the time. It's much clearer and quicker."

The two sat stunned. We usually had the children come over to show that we were not a threat and the technique worked this time.

Stan sat in Geraldine's lap and said, "Jessica and I started talking even before we were born. By the time we emerged, we already knew much more than most children of eighteen months."

Jessica said, "Since our birth, we have learned a lot more. Our parents have been communicating this way for years. They do a little tinkering with some areas of our minds to get some cells to split and thus become more powerful."

Stan said, "This has nothing to do with the reasoning portions of your mind. We have been experimenting on each other to learn more about our abilities. Originally our parents were given this ability by a powerful drug. A derivative of this drug is still used. It does the same thing as what we do manually but alters our DNA so we do not have to continually take the medication."

Jessica said, "We use our abilities to find cures for humanity's problems. Some are in the medical field but we also find criminals. Their deeds and proof of what they have done are brought to the attention of the courts. The courts find their own information and prosecute."

There was a long pause and John said, "Did you people cause the downfall of all those criminals in the news in the past few years?"

I said, "That was us and the courts. We just acted like concerned citizens and reported crimes we found."

"How come you are not talking in our minds?"

"It helps the first time to have both methods of communications. The verbal method allows you to think the old way and come to some sort of understanding. We've had lots of experience in doing this."

"How do we learn to talk like you do?"

"Just think at us. There's no need to push, we can pick it up."

Geraldine said, "I'd like to go."

I said, "You may leave at any time you wish. I know that you are thinking that we have seen your deepest and darkest thoughts. The fact is that I have known those thoughts since May. You may think you are a depraved monster but you're just normal. All of us have a dark centre. Over a few months, lots of light will come to that dark area. You can put it in order and throw out a lot of misconceptions. I think we are a lot more sane than any group has ever been before."

She still wanted to leave so Stan said, "Before you decide to leave, let me send to you what we know about compounds and chemistry in general. You'll see just what you have to gain."

Stan pushed into Geraldine's mind what she would find the most interesting. Her need to leave got less as her need to learn more increased. At the same time John was shown what would interest him the most. This type of presentation lasted almost two hours and at the end neither wanted to go. They had seen the worst in people and how those same people had changed.

The two asked questions until late and then stayed over. They did not sleep well but then again few prospective members did at this time.

The two woke up for breakfast and found most of the pack away doing what needed to be done. Herb and I were there with the children so they saw a friendly face.

John said, "I can see how you people are able to do as much as you do but what is to prevent you from going bad? I mean corrupt governments were overthrown by freedom fighters. Those same freedom fighters formed a new government and became corrupt."

Herb said, "The pack can change and evolve but it's a conservative amalgamation of minds. The oddballs are shown the error of their ways. All this hinges on everybody meeting in conclave to gain new knowledge and to get some overall direction of how to proceed."

"What if they don't show up?"

"Not everybody can make it all the time. Recently the pack wanted to have children to supplement the recruits brought in. The women were free to say no."

Geraldine said, "Amen to that."

Herb smiled and said, "It wasn't like that at all. The subconscious of the pack was at work. The females of the pack wanted children very strongly. The collective just voiced that idea. Piper, Kim and Melissa did not go along with the idea. Not that they didn't want children but because they were not ready for more just yet. When or if they feel like children, they will have them and woe to the male that opposes them."

Melissa said, "It's not like Herb is hard done by. He's in pig heaven and he knows it. The pack construct leads right back to the old saying by Thomas Jefferson where the people get the government they deserve. Like many other famous statesmen we see the need to be constantly vigilante to monitor our own freedoms as well as those not in the pack. So far there has been not the least sign of problems. Part of this was our choice of people we admit to the pack."

"Do you think the pack will always be benign?"

"Only to humanity as a whole. The criminals are given short shift. We can see the guilt quite easily. So far we have not had to do the judging other than picking out those that should be examined by society. The pack also did research upon itself. Arguments could be made that we are bias but there is nobody else that can come close to weighting the variables. When we leave Earth at some future date then we may start to have problems but not until perhaps seventy years after the separation."

"What do you mean about leaving Earth?"

"We are advancing in all fields of science. One day some of us may be able to leave this planet. We do not want all of humanity to die out if a catastrophe were to occur. When we are capable, we will search this system and then those nearby for suitable environments. If one or more are found then some of us will leave to start colonies."

"Would normals go too?"

"There is no need for this. We could take eggs and semen but for what purpose? Humanity has evolved and our children are the proof of that."

Talk went on to cover many topics until Geraldine finally said, "How do we get the chance to be elevated?"

Kim said, "We usually work on individual brains to increase their talents. This is not necessary but it tends to allow the trainees to come to grips with their new talents in an easier manner. You have to admit that what you have learned is a shock and we want you to adjust to it slowly. This process takes from three months to a year before the drug is administered. Remember what we said about both of you turning into love starved bunnies. Our way allows you to slowly work into the way the pack is."

Geraldine asked, "We could still enter into this group mind?"

"You can enter into it now but we have to pull you along and do the translating. Later when you have your powers, there will be no need for us to do this. I warn you though that the communal mind is something we always seek. In fact it is always in place but only those ones that are close are able to communicate well. We could work on you two now if that is what you want?"

"I'd really like that. What sort of abilities will you give us?"

"Empathy and the ability to heal for a start. We will also do some sorting of facts in your mind if you wish. We have done this hundreds of times with no problem. You will be able to remember much better but your thinking will not be altered even a bit. Our healing can also be used to so you will process information quicker. Effectively, you will become more intelligent. Not bad for just starting off."

Geraldine was eager to start but John was more hesitant. He still wanted to begin but had fears of somebody tinkering with his thinking processes.

We worked on Geraldine for two hours and had a break. Jordan was talking a mile a minute about what was happening.

To give John a chance we said we would do him tomorrow if he wanted us to. When the time came we just gave him the power to heal and feel the emotions of others. This happened once in a while but they always came back for the rest of the treatment once they saw that the rest had not lost anything.

Geraldine was serious for the next week while at school but she started to come to grips with the new sensations she felt.

She told us, "John's the same way. He tried to find a way to deal with this and soon got wrapped up in what he could do with his gift. Thankfully he's into business law and doesn't have to deal with blatant criminals just the ones that wear suits. He likes being able to know when he is being lied to."

I asked her, "What does John think of the way you think?"

"He asked me lots of questions and I think he's jealous. I can remember information from when we first met while he has difficulty. I can remember what I was taught as a girl and then as a student. It's a lot easier now to do my job. For this alone I have to thank you."

"No problem Geraldine. You will be helping us solve the problems of the world and perhaps we can help you solve some of the problems you think we should be working on."

"I can't wait."

-------

The work toward my doctorate was no harder than what I had been doing previously but I certainly was more busy. Herb, Melissa and Kim were not able to test out of everything. They each had a specialty to learn. Herb now took biological engineering to please his wives and found he loved the study. The group knew everything they had to teach about anatomy but they had to work on cadavers. They were not squeamish in the least and gave a very good accounting of themselves.

The three were not out for just their MD but to get Doctorate of Medical Science. This was quite an undertaking. There was a lot of lab work where they had to learn as much as they could about a particular specimen. I don't think anybody else was as good as those three.

All three wrote papers on their specialties and many inquiries came that had to be answered. Each of us only had a Master's degree but many thought us much older and experienced. This did not mean that we were not attacked. There was always some people out there that did not want to accept our ideas because it would mean abandoning their own. We could get by as long as the groups facing us did not join together. With this in mind we acted humble and polite but had to have an iron fist ready to strike. The brighter some people were the closer they were to the raged edge of sanity.

Our dissertations were all on schizophrenia but each of us took a different facet. I kept the original premise and expanded upon it greatly. The other three took one other form of the disease and then produced variations of the original tests to select those patients that could be helped. A variation of giardiniere-49 had to be used to treat each of the three symptoms. Here is where the Jamison Clinic did much of the work for us.

Their individual dissertations were from four fifty to five hundred pages long while mine was a thousand. This was over the usually accepted limit but we wanted many forms of proof to back out claims.

That August, the paperwork was sent in and copies were sent to other schools. We did not publish though. Unlike the thesis each of us had done, we had to wait for the establishment's response.

The three graduated at the top of their classes. After a stint as an inturn they would be full fledged MDs. They were now waiting for their doctorates in Medical Science.

To back our claims, we went to Toronto and began to work in the Jamison labs and then with other medical doctors to treat patients. At the same time the other three put in their requests to do their internships.

To avoid confusion, Melissa applied at the Children's Hospital Of Eastern Ontario which was affiliated with the Ottawa General Hospital. This, a teaching hospital, was in turn affiliated with the University of Ottawa.

Kim applied at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. Since she wanted to cover psychiatry then this was the place for her.

Herb didn't want to get far from the U of O so he applied to the Ottawa General Hospital.

Melissa and Kim would have to intern for a year to be a doctor and then four months for their specialty. Herb would normally do the same but he had lots of experience as a paramedic and a PA so they cut his time down to a total of six months.

I went to work immediately as a professor. I would be teaching more than most but it would be with the best of those students that should make pack one day.

Many other pack members gained their doctorates in a wide range of subjects. Sheila Knox had started many companies that could benefit from our knowledge. If it looked like we were independent then the pack would be safer. Too many discoveries in one area was not always good. We had to draw a fine line because Apex had to get some notoriety. To get around this we had junior pack members publish in whatever they were studying.

The Stewarts were ecstatic that we had done so well and so quickly. We had to congratulate them too because they were doing a great job of healing people and not letting it be known. The pack knew that this secret would come out simply because not that many people could keep this confidential. We had made our predictions long ago and we had to keep the Stewarts from going to far and doing it too quickly.

The governments finally okayed the construction of our village and would underwrite a portion of the costs. The junior members of the pack had done a lot more research than just in mechanics. Their studies had to include social dynamics and a wide range of other disciplines. This work was published under their names and praised the government for seeing beyond the end of their collective noses.

The RCMP had not given up its search for us but we had continued to feed them data but on a lesser scale. The big crooks apart from the politicians were simply not around.

The young pack members didn't just work making habitats but wanted to swing public opinion back to some of the values we once had. They had the energy to do this and we let them form a film company. One of the corporations we owned financed them and they began to make stories at four different levels. One was aimed at adults that had at least high school education. This was higher than what was usually seen in Canada or the USA.

It stressed common problems facing individuals, a family or a group. The hero was not Dudley Do-Right but one of seven introspective characters.

The other shows were similar but aimed at different age groups. Storyline and plot had to be worked out by the pack as a whole because of the complexity. Over the course of a week enough ideas came out that we could run all four shows for up to five years. The stories were related to the paranormal and the normal. Some ordinary people had the power of healing and empathy. They had to deal with normals and with each other.

One show was simply 'The Young Healers' and had to do with children being hounded by governments and large corporations. The agencies were going to experiment the kids to death and then examine their brains. Some episodes were slated where vivisection would be used on the young and beautiful girls.

Another story was in grade eight to twelve which was the standard format for a high school in Ontario. The students could use their empathy to make conquests of the opposite gender or to play sports with an advantage.

The next age group were young people that had graduated high school and had to deal in real life. 'Rat Race' had some were young professionals that used their power for good. This would be members of the medical profession, teachers, police, lawyers, judges and even some non-despicable politicians.

I had underestimated the pack's need for notoriety because everybody wanted to be in the movie making.

We had planned on Herb acting like Dan Aykroyd when the actor acted like a scientist when doing Psi Factor. Coincidentally the actor was born in Ottawa and must know something of odd life forms. The acting would hurt Herb's chances of being understood as a serious researcher but it would allow him to say a lot and not be believed.

Before the Stewarts became well known, Herb was supposed to do a scientific paper on the subject of the paranormal. Years later people were supposed to think that Herb was just evaluating his own mind. Once the public was softened up to the idea of the minor abilities of an esper, they would be more likely to accept the facts. This is the time we would need politicians ready to draught laws in our favour.

I felt like a spider on a web because of all the factors I had to either know about or actually control. Pack members had to go to Orillia to monitor the Stewarts. They had to keep people from talking while the Stewarts built up a reputation.

We learned about a person in New York that was using their esper ability. This rogue had to be converted or stopped. Bad publicity would kill us even before we started.

My own family was working hard but all of them were separated in different hospitals. Our time together was sporadic. The children wanted their father and their birth mothers. They got us in small groups and had to make the best of it.

The pack wanted to flex its muscle and I had to direct that to safe channels. I could not stop it. The movie making helped some but the pack could now show what they could really do. Individually they knew the danger to the pack but as a single entity they seemed to be oblivious to the problems.

I kept the lid on this because I had to resurrected the old idea of the superheros and their uniforms. How I did this was to help Herb with a similar speciality to his biological engineering.

Neural engineering was another emerging field that would help humanity. Here we wanted to manipulate the behaviour of the peripheral or central nervous systems. Nanotechnology was one of the tools used in this discipline. My hope was to find a way of connecting our nerves to an electronic interface. Transistors and chips could be made so small that they should be able to connect to individual nerves. The rub was that a doctor could not connect the millions of transistors necessary. We needed a great many small programmable robots.

The superhero persona needed props to make the pack look completely human. The government still thought we were a part of the system and testing out high tech systems. If the pack made these systems then we would justify our existence to the government, help the cripples of the world gain some mobility and also explain how we could do something that was impossible otherwise.

One other caveat was that the government could not get anything too good because they would get the wrong sort of ideas. If we made a suit so that a man was invincible then some fool organisation would use it to take over. Similarly if the Canadian government had it then it would get taken from us by a stronger power. We had the strongest on our southern border. Therefore we had to make something that was useful but not too great. It also had to be too difficult and much too expensive to duplicate.

Our theoretical research had shown that certain forms of ceramics had some weird and wonderful properties when they were formed into a hollow cells no more than one and a half microns across. We made ours by making a section three microns thick and then cutting holes in it with photo etching and a laser just like ICs. Only small constructs were possible.

We were able to test our hypotheses and found the material to be extremely strong. The portions could bend up to seventy percent without failure but this was in thin portions. The material was nine times stronger than the best titanium constructs and weighted ninety percent less.

We needed much thicker sections for strength and rigidity. This could not be done by glueing thin sections together. This meant that nanobots had to be constructed and put to work manufacturing what we wanted.

Hydraulics or even pneumatics could be used as actuators but were far too bulky. Memory wire could possibly do this job but what was available was not good enough. This meant more theoretical research.

One substance showed promise and was made in small quantities. We then needed a power source to cause the wire to contract. There was talk of some possible source of power that would come from an inter-dimensional tap but the pack was not going to wait twenty years for it and we worked on modifying conventional means.

A means of controlling the currents going to the memory wire had to be made and this was standard electronics but I pushed that ours had to be better and more reliable.

The best computer to control the drives was the human brain. Part of the reason for not using an electronic computer was simply to justify my assertions I had made to Jack Entris. The human brain needed some form of interface and this is where Herb's contribution came in.

He helped us develop a smaller nanobot than what had been used to make the ceramic structural members but this time they would operate in the human body to form a matrix of connections to our nerves.

Lab rats were the first recipients. We had lots of problems and many revisions had to be made. To compound the problem, the rats' cranium was not that large so only a small transmitter could fit within it.

The pack worked as smaller units. They then got together in larger more efficient units to solve more difficult problems. We came up with the design of the exoskeleton that should work very well.

Armour was important since our shields were not as useful. A lot of time was devoted to experimentation. We had some good leads.

We needed a rocket to fly and the pack had to find a way of doing this. Hydrogen peroxide was good but did not have the power. We wanted a fuel that was strong and not poisonous. This took a long time to find then we had to formulate a way of manufacturing it.

Manufacturing the rocket motor was difficult because we had to work within the safety parameters of our propellant. The engine itself was theoretical but the harness and placement was a lot more trial and error. The rocket thrust had to be varied. We could do this with handgrips. Manoeuvring could be done with the pilot shifting his centre of gravity.

While all this was going on my mates had to still pull duty as interns. It was lucky for us that the government and medical associations had stepped in and put a stop to eighteen hour days. Too many patients had the audacity to die at the overworked internist's hands.

We all were working like doctors had years ago but it was by our own choice. Our minds and bodies needed less rest but we still needed some. The less intense activities had to be used as a substitute for some of the intense mental activity. Usually this rest was in the form of monitoring the politicians and finding crooks. We went all over the planet to find experts just so we could read their minds. They had insights into some areas that we had not delved into yet and this enriched our pool of knowledge.

Herb finished his internship before the first dissertation was evaluated. They wanted to hear us when they all had a chance to evaluate the work we did. Herb had other tests for his medical degree to take but they were easy. His dissertation was a different matter. There were experts present from all over the world to hear what he had to say.

Herb stayed calm through the whole procedure but detected a lot of animosity from those that saw Herb as a major league competitor for funding and acclaim.

Kim and then Melissa did their tests. The experts judging the work pounded unmercifully at them but they knew it was just another form of testing.

When the three were done, the experts adjourned to Apex to see the results of my tests. Mrs Nibs and Dean Addams knew about this sort of testing but were not prepared for how strongly the guest questioners hammered at me. There were so many questions that it took three days to complete their inquiry.

Only after we got confirmation that we received our degrees, did the news go out that slightly half of the schizophrenic patients could be completely cured. We let the universities take care of the reporters so our names would be hidden just a bit more.

Jamieson, Stethbridge, U of O, and Apex were given research grants to continue work on the tests and then on the tailor-made proteins we had fabricated. At the same time job offers came in from all over but we graciously declined all of them.

Jamieson was linked more firmly to Apex so the two could share expertise and personnel. The other pack owned businesses worked together when we could so people could be used to the best advantage. The students at the Albright School for Gifted Children grew as more troubled teens were found. They too had a fast track to Apex if this suited them.

Albright also served as the set for one of the television series we were producing. Since they were coed now there was no problem with ostracising half of the population. The students there were just as much hams as the pack. Since everybody rotated then everybody would get a chance to be in an episode.

The pack's ego seemed to be split with one half working on making our superhero equipment and portraying us as simple healers. There were only three episodes of each of the four shows plus four much more expensive pilot episodes produced. We had to be subtle here and come across so the typical person with only a grade eight education would like what he or she saw. Later we would stretch the viewers limits by going to grade nine.

We gave CBC, our government owned broadcaster first crack. They liked what they saw but did not want to pay what the show warranted. They figured we were new at this and could be relied on to take what was offered. We found some private Canadian networks that were interested in viewing our offerings so we sent a DVD of the shows and the paperwork to explain out position. This was not usually done because many millions of dollars were riding on the outcome. Anybody else would have gone to each network to act as a huckster. If none of this worked, we would then have to sell the shows in the States or the UK.

Independently produced television series were very rare these days. Usually a network would look at an idea and then finance the venture. They then could drop the idea if it didn't pan out. It also meant that another network could not get a chance at the series.

We received a lot of phone calls but it wasn't until mid March that they started to get serious for their fall schedule. They needed committed spots in their schedules. Two companies seemed to want what we had to offer more than the others that saw our work.

They did not want all four either, one liked 'The Young Healers' and the other liked 'Rat Race' our story of young professionals. Herb breathed a sigh of relief because he was not interested in getting his name hurt by backing a show that would originally be seen as fictional.

Herb, Joy and Bobby went to the Toronto head office of one company to meet with the executives. It just happened that the two youngsters had major parts in 'The Young Healers'.

Herb shook hands with Simon Young, a man of thirty five with hair that was going white already.

Young said, "I'm glad to meet you and I see you brought two of the stars of your pilot. We may be discussing money so would you like for me to arrange a tour of our facilities?"

"No thanks. I want my team of shysters here so I won't get taken to the cleaners."

Simon laughed but thought this was a joke.

Joy and Bobby were not reticent and moved forward to shake hands too. Joy said, "It's nice to meet you too. We don't usually get to meet the executives but my friend Bobby wanted to see if we could promote our work."

Bobby's hand was ready and said, "Joy means she wants to stay with us so I don't make a pest of myself."

Simon said, "I doubt if that would happen. Why don't you have a seat?"

When seated Simon said, "We liked 'The Young Healers' but we have some suggestions for what we would like to see in further plots."

Herb smiled and said, "We are open to suggestion but we have quite a few episodes already written and some already produced."

"Really? I was not aware you were willing to invest that kind of money."

"We are quite sure the shows will sell but we may have to go south or abroad to do so."

"You're that sure of your success?"

"We did a study of demographics and audience appeal before we started." Herb pulled out of his briefcase a nicely bound document that had a synopsis in the back of the sheaf of papers.

Simon looked over the document then sat back and viewed a few pages then went for the condensed version. Five minutes later he said, "You really did a study. May I keep this?"

"Sure."

"I noticed that you personally did some of the work and so did Joy Lee and Robert Henderson. They have the same names as the two sitting before me."

"Joy and Bobby are fourteen and fifteen. Both have degrees in engineering, and law. They are quite able to perform this sort of work on their own."

Simon looked at the two and didn't know what to think. They were too young to graduate high school. Bobby said, "Joy and I got our Masters Degrees last year. We're waiting a while before going further. We are just too young to be accepted into any of the professional organisations."

"How could you do that? You are both so young."

"We have exceptional memories, high IQs and a burning need to learn. Acting is just for fun."

When nothing was said, Joy mentioned, "We had a hand in writing the scripts and the dialogue was selected from what our target audience would understand best. The plots and subplots were similarly taken from what is troubling people in our target audience."

"You sound very accomplished and still so young."

"Age is not a valid criteria. Bobby wrote 'Mailman', 'Jinks' and 'Heresy' and all have reached the best seller's charts.

"My god, I never linked your name to that author. I think I read at least a dozen of your books."

"Thank you but since the mutual admiration society is in session, I have to say that Joy has written 'Pussycat', Night Daemon', 'Sensation' and at least four other major works. Then she has published in the Canadian Journal of Microbiology more times than I recall."

He looked at Joy and his brain went into neutral for a few minutes. Finally he said, "If you don't mind me asking, how did you manage to write an article in a medical journal?"

"All of us do research. You have heard of the old saying, 'Publish or Perish'?"

"Yes I have."

"In the last four years I only published five serious articles in conjunction with others in my family. I'm still kidded for being a slacker. Our portion of the family are more into engineering but we're working on a man machine interface. I could have done my PhD on that but we like to keep current."

"I am truly amazed and I hope you write a fictional book about that article, perhaps even a screen play."

"I suggested that idea at a family meeting but they don't want too much coming out just yet."

There was another long pause and then the man excused himself. His mind was in turmoil and he was afraid he was having his leg pulled. He pulled up Bobby's website in a computer in another room and saw the Bobby's photograph. There was a listing of his books. The words with the photo implied that this was an old picture and Bobby was much older.

Simon gave orders to his secretary to do a quick search on us and came back to the room. "I'm sorry for inconveniencing you. There was something I had to take care of."

Herb said, "That's fine. Can we get down to business?"

"Sure."

Herb went through the man's mind to see what the offer was and took out a DVD from his pocket. When an opening in the conversation came, he said, "Let's talk to your boss and see if he likes these three twenty two minute episodes."

Simon said, "I think that's a great idea. I don't know who's free though."

He phoned five people and found three that had some time to go to the viewing room. The group followed Simon. We found that the secretary had already found a lot about us on the net.

Some men arrived and the two groups were introduced then the episodes were shown. After the first one, we knew the company liked what they saw.

Congratulations were given as they emerged and Simon's secretary was there with a thick volume of paper with articles linked to the three pack members.

They went to Mr Whitfield's office instead of Simon's. When everybody was seated, Whitfield said, "How many episodes can you provide?"

"I have with me five years worth of scripts. We can run through the summer and provide 260 episodes at the rate of twelve per week. The characters have to age or move on so I recommend doing sixty then wait for the natural aging process to begin. After that time the scripts will change to reflect conditions at that time."

Whitfield was calling to see if it was a bluff so Herb handed over a CD. The man put it into the computer and picked numbers at random and quickly scanned the scripts. He finally conceded, "You invested a lot of time and money into this."

"Scripts don't take long. Bobby and Joy can put out a dozen a day and they are only two of the writers."

"I find that hard to believe Mr Stewart."

"I would too in your shoes. Mr Young felt the same way and I assume he found some information about the three of us on the net." He turned to the Simon and said, "Would you share what you found with your associates?"

The stack of paper was simply handed to Whitfield and he started to go through it. The other two were able to read some of the sheets before or after Whitfield was finished with them.

Whitfield looked at Herb and said, "How can this be true?"

Herb said, "Motivated and intelligent children in an affluent family have the world at their doorstep."

The men wanted time to rethink their strategy. Herb said, "I'll make an offer to you."

Whitfield said, "What do you want?"

A bound booklet was handed over. No fixed amount was listed. If the episodes did not draw at least a half million viewers, then the cable company would not have to pay anything. From then on the a percentage was demanded. This was based on the cost of commercials that would be aired during the show. Reruns, and memorabilia were covered too.

The words were in simple English and there was lots of wording where the cable company was protected but so were we.

It took fifteen minutes to twice go through the document. Whitfield said, "You're very sure of the success of this show."

"I am."

"We make a lot less money if this show takes off."

"You still make a considerable sum. We believe there will be something like a cult following for our four shows. The shows are all interlinked. You have the option of selling to the States. This show alone will net your company seven hundred million over five years. With all four running at the same time that total will reach one billion. Seinfeld ran for many years. We will run for longer and I'm prepared to back up my words with money."

On the way out, Herb asked, "Did I come on too strong?"

Bobby said, "Not really. All the talk could be bullshit. They don't have to make a commitment until we have twenty five more episodes in their possession. They know from the pilot and the four shows, that they will make them a lot of money once the series gathers momentum."

That night they got on a flight to Winnipeg to talk about 'Rat Race'. The discussion was much the same including the additional time to think.

The pack switched gears and pumped out a lot more episodes of both series in preparation of them selling. Both shows displayed a lot of flesh but so did the girls that went to school. The show was sexually charged with hints of boy/boy and girl/girl activity alluded too. This we knew happened though not as much as what was seen in books.

Bobby would love to turn his old erotic stories into scripts and then act as the lead man but he was still too young to go into porno.

-------

I had sent three people to New York months ago to track down a possible esper. After checking many thousands of people, they had found evidence of people that had a compulsion placed on them. The tampering was hard to detect but that did not mean it was done by an expert. It just meant that tampering was hard to find.

Nicolas had taught us enough and we got into the police database on our own. It was only this way that we got enough names for us to even suspect that an esper was active.

People were robbed but the majority of them were crooks. This only meant that the police were not informed of all that had happened. When the three member team started drawing blanks, I sent Brandon and his mate Tatum down to help. They brought a team of seven with them.

Jack still contacted me every Tuesday. The RCMP were getting so good that we had to route the calls through land lines. This sort of pursuit kept us on our toes but it was getting more dangerous to the pack.

Nicolas had routed the calls through the Department of Defence, the Prime Minister's Office, the Russian Embassy and even back to RCMP Headquarters but they kept on coming.

Nicolas was not worried about being traced all the way back but I was. Nicolas reluctantly sent out some people to check on the opposition and was surprised at what he found. The Americans, Russians, Israeli and the British had joined the hunt. They were ostensibly trying to help but they wanted to learn our tricks. They had even picked up a few already but most of them were just variations on some basic procedures.

Nicolas was actually pleased at this and drove himself hard to find some new ways of keeping us safe. He took my suggestion though and when the next call came, two people in another room were speaking Hebrew with a slight Russian accent. Jack got his update and we had our usual chance to chat.

The next week, Jack parted with the word, "Shalom," and I immediately started the same reply but changed it to, "Bye Jack."

We all had a big smile and we figured the Russians and the Israelis would be searching their own databanks to find a reference to us. We would have supplied them with leads but this would only say we got into their computers too once they drew a blank.

Major crime in Canada had declined. We still had crimes of passion. There were also a large surge in drug related crimes when the supply started to dry up. We could tell we were doing something good when the price of drugs shot up and deaths by contaminants grew significant when drugs were stepped on a lot harder.

Politicians that were not too black to salvage had found packets with a list of their crimes. The lists were usually burnt and the politicos were good boys and girls until we had to call in the RCMP or the newspapers. By now the police did the clean up under orders from above because they knew they had no choice.

We were getting noticed by many governments, funding came in if we would carry on research in the fields they wanted. Their money was good but we had few people that were free to do the work.

Full pack members now numbered 754 with another 62 ready to ascend. The newcomers took a few months to start to be productive and two more until they had what we had which was the equivalent of a PhD. It was actually five months later that the brain stopped growing and reorganising.

The members were sent out again to recruit. It moderated some of the more aggressive attributes we had. It gave the rest of us a breathing space. My plan was to alter the compulsion put on recruits to also make them just a bit less hawkish. Over time that moderating influence would change the outlook of the pack. That is if the pack would let me do this.

The two television networks decided to take their shows and wanted the other two as well. It was just too convenient and we found that they were working together to take advantage of our offer. They did their own studies and saw that Herb was right and we were on the cusp of a possible new cult craze.

Herb went off to sign the papers while the actors had to begin doing their thing. Herb got back in three days with the contracts in hand but there was more.



"They want an oriental flavoured show that will be aimed at the Asian community in British Columbia. I gave them some ideas and they liked them. We may have a fifth show to produce."

"How much?"

"Based on how the other series will reinforce it I think about a million for each episode. Reruns in the States and elsewhere will double that figure."

"This is going to hurt the kids. Jack met the kids and we cannot use an illusion on the cameras. Makeup will not hide their age and intelligence."

"I thought of that. They can direct."

"That's not going to work. We don't need a director."

"We can pass on it. The show should run at least four years and bring in 600 million dollars. We are going through a lot of money now."



I linked with Herb and then with the rest of our family. The children were certainly excited but then thoughtful as they saw our problem. We found some solutions but none were good. We had made an exoskeleton that worked but it was still buggy. The children could enter one and appear as a normal character. If they didn't have to fight then they should make it.

Another option was to let the full grown actors play their parts and use a computer to put older faces of Stan, Jessica and Jordan on them. This did not go over well at all.

A third choice was for the children to be cameramen. This was not a simple job and if this was like 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' then there would be lots of areal shots.

The kids didn't like this either but we decided to put together a pilot and see. The kids insisted on writing the script and this would keep them occupied and allow them to be part of what we were doing. If they wanted to act then they had to find a way to do it without endangering us.

I made sure work on our skeletal frame went on. With many of the pack out hunting for recruits there were few to help. We had managed to form three types of personal armour but each had their strengths and weaknesses. This we thought would be a much better product to give to our government.

Stan, Jessica and Jordan were tying to help after the pilot was written. The best way to help was to link together and put our combined intellect behind it. This only worked when we had a lot of raw data to work with and so far all of the knowledge of mankind had been at our fingertips.

Research was needed and we layed out a few hundred experiments and then started to do them. It was fun and almost like old times when the kids were working with me.

While we worked, the weekly segments were produced. If the actors or even a majority of them were pack then they would link to see what had to be done and how the characters were to change as the segment progressed. It usually took only a half hour to complete unless there were a lot of scene changes and the need for special lighting. They usually changed and did another segment until they had eight to twenty four done in a day.

We did have an exceptional computer that Nicolas designed that took the movies we fed it and made them much better. We could electronically change the locale from a schoolroom to a jungle at high noon with a few commands.

We could not do the pilot right away because the kids wanted their parents in the movie. Finding the time to do this was not easy. Two medical doctors were still interns and another doctor was busy with patients or research. My doctorate did not seem as glamourous but I was happy with it.

Three days after the script was written we linked and the kids gave us our parts and we went over them. Mark had been with us for a few years now and he was encouraged to help. He had progressed from a healed child to a full student that knew about us.

Mark had been pulled into a link before and always sought to be with us. Information passed easily during a link and it took seconds to know everything we had to do.

The plot was implausible but that did not make it worthless. Many shows on television were unlikely but they still brought in a lot of money. The movie took a few hours because the kids had difficulty flying around with the cameras as we flew around and fought each other.

Mark was not an esper and had very few of our abilities. So far we wanted everybody to be empathetic and have the ability to heal. He got to save the old master and get a chance at joining the cadets in the temple.

The youngsters put the images through the computer and then edited in the background or the foreground. They took their time to do this right and had to redo some scenes with different lighting but this was done electronically.

We had spoken in Mandarin to others but English among ourselves. The mysticism aspect was laid on thick but again we let this ride. The show would not make a great hit but it may with a small target audience.

Mark's family was invited over. We usually met once a month to keep in touch but it was my family that were always busy. The other two children did not come. We had a small meal and then Mark showed his parents the movie we had made. The parents were amazed and wondered about the flying but were too self-conscious to ask.

Mark had his mom and dad go through a small skit and the short video went through the computer. Here Mark did the simple editing but he did not have the control we had. When he was done, his parents saw themselves huddled together on the deck of a four masted schooner in a violent storm.

Angie said, "This is absolutely amazing. I have period clothes and so does Bert. I just can't get over it."

Bert said, "I'll second that. You could make complete movies here like the one we saw first."

Mark said, "We do. Not all of them but just two. If we farm out some we can work on 'Warrior'."

Bert looked at Stan and said, "Is this pilot going to sell?"

"It probably will but the audience it will attract should be small."

"And your saying that Jordan and Melissa and you wrote the script, directed, and then edited the movie?"

"It's not that hard. My brother wanted Shakespearean phrases in Mandarin but we talked him out of it because not many people that do not speak English would know of him."

"That's too bad."

"Ya I know but Confucius was a neat guy too and we put some of his thoughts into the movie."

-------

Stan sent the disk off by courier with a revised contract based on the smaller audience. They must have been eagerly awaiting it because a man was at our door three days later with the contract in hand and wanting twenty, one hour episodes to fill in for reruns that would have been shown through the summer. This was read from his mind as he waited in the office at Apex.

I entered the office and one of the secretaries said, "There's a Mr Chen here that wants to see you, Mrs Compton."

Mr Chen was in charge of viewing aimed at the Asian community. He was tall for an Asian and looked to stay in shape. When I walked closer he stood and took a chance. He said in Mandarin, "Hello Mrs Compton. My name is Mr Chen."

I replied in his mother tongue, "Hello Mr Chen. Would you like to go to my office? It would be quieter there."

"Certainly."

On the way he said, "I'm very surprised that an Occidental can speak my language better than I can. Your diction is a delight to listen to."

"Thank you Mr Chen. It's a pleasure to meet you and somewhat surprised that the president for the entire west coast came to see me."

"You are certainly well informed Mrs Compton."

We came to my door and it had my name and position on it. Chen said as he sat in a chair, "I am surprised that you're a professor and at so young an age."

"My family are energetic in their quest for knowledge." The other door opened and the kids came in. They could not stay out.

"I see I will have to introduce my children. They're the ones that wrote the script, choreographed the moves, directed the action and dialogue and then cleaned up the movie. This tall boy of three is Stan. Beside him is his sister Jessica of the same age. The smaller one of two is Jason."

Chen did not believe me. Stan said in Mandarin, "We follow the family tradition of intensive learning. We did indeed do all of the behind the scenes work."

Stan mentally stepped back and Jessica said, "Our work was hurried and more juvenile than we wished. We could clean it up in time and reissue the DVD if you wish."

Chen said, "We did wonder about some of the choices of dialogue but the pilot was very good. Our test audience raved about it and even the English speaking community liked it. We plan on subtitling it if we are allowed to officially release it."

I could see that the kids were ecstatic about this but they held themselves reserved as a proper person from China would. Jordan had to get into the act and said, "How many shows do you wish? I'm sure we can write the scripts for at least a dozen today. If our family will help we can produce perhaps three episodes tonight."

Chen was shocked. "A one hour episode takes a very long time to produce."

"Mr Chen, you saw our work. Stan wrote the script in half an hour with some help from us. We had to wait for our family to find the free time to devote to this venture. All the acting and then the processing took less than three hours. I'm sure we can do better than that once we understand the process better."

Chen could not understand how Jason could speak so well or even his brother and sister. He did not understand how all this could be done so quickly.

I stepped in and said, "The children are bright, knowledgeable and energetic. We just started making pilots and television series. The pilot was actually a home movie. Apart from the fine minds that produced the movie we have a very sophisticated computer that adds or deletes what we want."

It took a while but finally he said, "I'll like to see your set and your equipment if I may?"

"Certainly but I have to get someone to continue with my experiments." I turned to the kids and said, "What state are your experiments in?"

Jordan said, "I have to stay for perhaps twenty minutes."

I turned to Chen and said, "Do you mind waiting that long?"

"Not at all. May I see what you are doing?"

"Yes you can but what the children are doing may look much more interesting."

Chen felt slighted as if he was going to watch the children building little homes out of precut logs.

We weren't into the lab and Chen saw seven assistants working on the experiments. Jordan got Chen over to see what he was doing and spent a few minutes explaining it to a layman. Chen no longer felt slighted. Jessica and Stan compounded the man's problem by describing what they were doing.

Chen never got to see my work and just watched the children and the lab assistants performing their duties.

We tidied up our work and gave directions and then watched Jordan make his observations and type rapidly on the keyboard to get them recorded.

We got home fifteen minutes later and showed the computer and our cameras to Chen. He said, "These are the cameras that produced the pilot?"

Stan said, "They have their advantages. We tinkered with them somewhat. They're better than they were originally. The computer made the vast improvement."

"Would you show me?"

"Only if you will participate."

"I will do what you wish."

The three kids linked and came up with a script and then called three pack members over and verbally asked if they would assist. They liked the kids and the idea of helping.

Chen lost his jacket and gained a wooden sword. The man had ten minutes to study his lines and see where the story was going. Jessica choreographed the conflict in slow motion and the computer would fix it up. A pleasant scene while going to a restaurant in China then the scene was supposed to change to a temple.

The pack played advanced students of the martial arts and Chen was introduced to them with the aim of teaching them. He did know something about fighting but was very worried because the pack members were much better than he was. He did as he was asked with Stan, Jordan or Melissa calling out directions.

At the end the local warlord came in and there was a battle royal. Here I was the warlord and fought Chen in slow motion to the children's direction.

When the clip was finished, Chen got to see it. "This has better definition than I thought."

Stan said, "We will process this and see how good it will come."

"When are we going to do the acting?"

When producing a movie, the actors are directed what to do with no film being used and the scenes are done repeatedly until they knew what to do and what to say. Later they got into their costumes and did it before the cameras.

Stan replied, "Let's try this first."

The three worked on the images and enhanced them. The background was added and then the costumes. The wooden swords were now metal. The images of tables were kicked over or broken and people were sliced as if this were a real fight. Unlike the usual Asian fight scene. The enemy did not come at the hero one or two at a time. The hero had to be fast and aggressive and took the fight to the enemy and pushed some back.

The process started again and the mouths worked to be in sync with the dialogue. Chen's voice came through but now it was more refined to suit the hero. He wore a sort of leather and brass armour under his silk suit to ward off the blows. Smaller details were added.

Jordan put the information onto a DVD and went to a large television. The actors and a few extra watched the finished product. Chen just did not understand. He saw himself on the screen doing things that he had not done. His voice was mouthing words he had not said.

When the file finished, Stan said, "That was twenty two minutes long. You can use this as a teaser for the series."

"It does fit."

"Certainly, that was the intention."

"I could do that."

"The price is fixed at a hundred thousand dollars and you get ten percent for acting in it. Your company makes whatever it can. I'll even sell rerun rights as long as you personally give up any claim to them."

The man looked at me and felt helpless. I said, "The deal is good from your company's point of view. There is a lot of blood and gore but we can clean that up."

Stan saw the need for this improvement. Viewers would not like the realism and we were not trying to promote this. The change didn't take long and another DVD was burnt. When we watched it, the dying bodies were now turned just a bit to hide most of the damage.

Chen said after comparing the two, "I will agree to your terms. May I have both disks to show the people at head office. I know they will be impressed."

Stan was the one who spoke because this was his baby. "That's satisfactory. If you wish, I can call in some students and we can start doing subsequent stories. We could get two or three done today. Are you interested in continuing your character?"

"I might."

"The pay will be ten thousand per one hour unit. We will do six to ten units before you have to leave. You sign off on your rights to your character."

"Whys is that?"

"After you have left, you will not be here to act. The computer will have enough of your moves that you personally are not needed."

"Six more units?"

"Perhaps eleven in all."

"I like it."

"Then we had best sign the original agreement and the one you have brought with you."

I read the contracts and made minor corrections. The company was not really trying to screw us but to protect themselves more. Chen initialled the changes with me.

The contract for the episodes was amended to be similar to the other four series even with the smaller audiences this one would have. Two other contracts were made. One was to sell the short movie we just made and the other was with Chen so he would get paid.

I went back to work and the kids started writing scripts and talking quickly to Chen in his language as if they were asking his opinion. Students and some pack came and helped. Now it was up to the kids to make a few million for the corporate coffers.

Chen stayed over and met the rest of us. The kids smelt money and were like slavedrivers in how they pushed Chen to make more money for both groups. The next morning I left for work with the kids taking care of their guest.

Recruits started to trickle in. They were assessed by at least a dozen of us while linked. We took a chance and after giving them the new compulsion, they were given Abicore. This was a lot quicker this way and we had already found out all we could about healing a brain directly.

The recruits were then linked to us and saw how they fit in within the pack. Later they linked with each other and some old hands to transfer knowledge. Landscaping had to be done in their minds to straighten out their thoughts.

Brandon and Tatum sent some people from New York but had not come themselves. Their quarry was very elusive and they were determined to find out everything.

The oriental pilot was broadcast on the east coast then it was picked up by the parent company to cover the rest of Canada. There were fewer people watching television in the summer but those that did loved the show.

Herb had his face electronically scarred so that he would be less recognisable. It took only four days after the show was aired in Ottawa for Herb to be hounded by patients and nurses for an autograph. It made our jobs more difficult but it got us more cooperation.

The pack loved the notoriety and I hoped this would be a substitute for their wanting to show off their esper skills.

The computer recorded the details of our bodies so we did not have to act but I required the pack to go through the motions when they performed. This would link them to the movies and they could see themselves on the television and feel good about themselves. An electronic doppelganger with their face and voice would not be as good.

The rest of the pack sent or brought in many more recruits and we had to use the newest members to help us process all those that we figured were good. The surge took two months to clear up but we were still getting people. From stats and phone calls, we estimated that the pack was nearing 1,700 members. Many of the students were elevated as well. They were just as good and we had monitored them more. Most of which were neophytes that needed lots of guidance.

We found some disturbing news from Los Angeles. Another esper may be there but he hid his tracks just like the one in New York. Brandon had been away for five months and was not close enough yet to find much. The esper was very good and staying anonymous. Brandon did not call for more people and it was not my place to just send them. He was an adult and could make his own decisions. I on the other hand sent most of the old hands to L.A. to see if we could wrap this business up a lot quicker. Perhaps Brandon would get the idea without having to be told.

Work went on. We had caught up on a year's worth of instalments for each of the five television shows. The pilots for the next four of them would be shown in the next week and we prepared for the curious to arrive.

The Stewart clan was well aware of our stardom and some of them learned of our real reason for making the shows the way we had. All they had to do was keep a lid on their situation for another year or so.

Greg, Rose, Jeff and Jacqueline were visiting us while little Michael remained in Orillia. The adults were learning more details about the shows we produced and got to see samples of what we had already done. They were amazed at us and what our computer could do. The two men were on vacation and would be with us for another ten days.

The kids were out of work with the DVDs sent off and they shifted over to the 'Power Man' configuration. We had the details down but the nanobots were not very fast. The children encouraged the new pack members to work with them to develop this system.

All three had exoskeletons which they used to find improvements in design. This was a costly process because each structural member had to be made from scratch by the nanobots and then the attachments made to them.

The control of the units was not too bad. We developed an interface that amplified our thoughts thousands of times. This was needed because the interface that received the energy was too unresponsive. This receiver, translated our thoughts into electronic impulses. Normal humans could not use this amplifier because they had far too little or no energy to begin with. We basically waited for a valid reason to finish the direct connection of the project. Even the children didn't want nanobots working in their heads.

Jordan liked the idea of a spider and proved in a computer simulation that the idea was feasible especially by someone as small as he was. His cousins from across town were over here a lot. Ellen did not need a babysitter but liked that her and our children were all getting along. Like their older cousins they liked the spider idea too.

Ellen and Jacqueline sat with me when I had one of my rare days off and used it to get to know our guests better. Ellen said, "Your kids are inspiring mine. They need their peers to get them going."

I had to laugh out loud, "Inspiring? Well maybe but my kids want to make some exoskeletons for yours. I can see giant spiders patrolling the farm and trying to explore their limits."

Jacqueline had seen the devices. They were not working at the time and was amazed at how much the children knew about them. Deep inside she wondered if her son Michael should get a mind like ours. At the moment she figured it was heredity and healing that did this for us.

"That does look a little freaky. Christopher and Daniel would go out in the orchard and pick apples if they could. They'd do anything for Stan. Since they saw him in those movies, he's their god."

"I shouldn't have let him do all that."

"Why? He has to learn. Those movies are not going to get out."

"I know that, it's just that their hero worship is a little too strong for my tastes."

"Nonsense! Emily and Stephanie are no different when they look up to Jessica. They just don't carry on like the boys. Those XY genes mean they always go to extremes."

"I have to agree with you there."

The kids had garnered enough information from their experiments to get the pack to process it. They now had nanobots that were thirty one percent more efficient. Another nanobot manufactured the previous variety. The small minions wore out after eleven hours of work and a third type of nanobot had to go in and take them out for disposal. We were working on a large type that would carry around the raw materials for the construction so the workers could work instead of travel the majority of the time.

I described the recent improvements to Ellen. She had helped design them but had not heard about their performance. Usually we were very close to what theory dictated. This had to be done with telepathy because we could not let Jacqueline know too much.

"Ellen, would you like another coffee?"

"Sure."

I got up to get the pot and suddenly felt apprehensive but not overly so. I didn't know why. I called out mentally and verbally, "Something's wrong. I have no idea what it's about or if it's a threat." There were not many pack members around at the moment but there were perhaps a few dozen students.

Jacqueline was very nervous now and asked, "What's wrong?"

"I don't know, just a feeling."

Ellen asked too but then concentrated so she could feel what I felt.

Pack members in the city did not feel anything. Melissa, Kim and Herb said they would keep vigilant but would continue to work.

The children along with everyone else went on a new threat posture. The feeling of danger was more of an irritation now. I poured a coffee for Ellen and then myself. I scanned the surrounding area as good as I could and Ellen was doing the same thing.

Ellen said, "I didn't feel anything but you're more sensitive than me. I wonder what it was?"

"I don't know. It's probably a normal that feels threatened and their talent kicked in. I can still feel it but it's very weak now. It could be that a normal is looking for me or possibly us. I don't understand the feeling."

"Should we go to a higher threat status?"

"I don't think so. I'm the only one that feels it and its getting weaker."

"That makes me feel better."

I kept my scanning up for at least five minutes when I sensed a high frequency hum that I had never detected before in this mental band. It started to suddenly get louder and louder, and that was all I remembered.

-------

I woke up and I was suddenly alert. The hum I had heard was still present though not as painful now. I was tied up and laying on the floor of our gym with almost the entire population of the farm. My mind could not detect anybody, except those close to me. I had no idea about the children and I started to freak out until I got control of myself. I was like a normal now and I was a frightened as hell.

I concentrated on those nearby but they were asleep. All I could remember was a burst of energy that hurt so much that I fled consciousness.

Ellen was talking to somebody and I couldn't detect any stress in her voice. She was conversing casually to somebody about the pack. The voice that asked the question was somebody I had not heard before. I could not hear, see or sense Jacqueline.

There were other voices in the house and I heard the footsteps or activity of a lot of people.

I studied all I could while I tried hard to get out of my bindings. Three people came to me and I was relieved to see that one was Brandon. I cast out my mind and tried to read his. He was changed somehow. All three were wearing some sort of tight fitting skull cap. I could only figure that it was a way of avoiding the painful hum I heard.

"Brandon, what's going on?" I could not make much of a contact even at this range. The hum of interference and the helmet must be the reason.

"I can't talk about it."

"Why not?"

"Rules."

"Who's rules?"

Brandon or the two strangers did not reply. I was picked up and carried to the dining room. Strangers were walking through the house and picking at things that they had no business doing. Some of our students were standing shocked but they only looked at me with shame or hopelessness. When I went by one I found he was under a strong compulsion. This told me why they were free.

We came to a man of near sixty with grey hair sticking out of his helmet. He wore an expensive suit. I tried to read his mind but felt a strong block as I had when I first met Herb. The hum and the helmet made it even more difficult.

I called out, "Why have you attacked us? We were looking for rogues that would get us all in trouble. You people are very good at hiding your tracks."

"Hello Mrs Compton. My name is Charles Hamilton IV."

"I'm glad to meet you but not in this situation."

"I wish it were different too but our family was absolutely shocked to find out that we have such strong competition."

"How are we competitors? We wish to live in peace and all we have to do is slowly introduce our esper abilities to the rest of the people. We don't want to be persecuted or burned at the stake."

"Man has changed so very little since Salem. Your goals have merit but we wish to gather much more power and wealth before we allow the peons to find out about our abilities."

"You want to take over your country?"

"Heavens no. We wish to control it though and eventually the rest of the world. Our secret will eventually come out but we already control much of the media. People will not know of us for many centuries."

"So you wish to force us to help you?"

"You are so very intelligent. It is a shame that the Abicore will not help an adult gain the intelligence you enjoy. You're right though. We can compel you to assist us. Later we can deepen the compulsion until you would think that we are your saviours."

"You cannot get far. There are already 2,000 pack members. We will fight."

"That may be true but you will be fighting to assist us. The pack members in this house will do the same even if it's against their friends. As pack members come to this house, they will be processed as you will be. Eventually you will call pack members to you and they will be converted a few at a time."

"You still can't expect to get away with this."

"On the contrary, we will. I brought nine family members that have some strong mental abilities and almost eighty thralls that do the physical work. In your case, we may make another grouping. You would use your intelligence and mental abilities to assist us. We are already working on a way of removing or altering the mental abilities of some members of your pack. If this fails, I'm afraid you will have to be disposed of."

"Thralls! You're talking slavery."

"How perceptive," he said sarcastically. "The best government is that of a benevolent dictator and our family plan on being the guiding force on our planet."

"I'll never help you."

"Many people say that. Have you not noticed that Brandon, Tatum and those other pack members that you sent to New York are now happily working for me?"

I could tell that they, or at least Brandon, was not happy but he did seem to follow this jerk's orders. "They did but I won't."

"Let us see."

Hamilton called somebody to bring something. It was a helmet with a lot of odd equipment. I kicked into overdrive and fought as hard as I could. I could still not break my bonds and was forced into a chair and tied to it.

"My you are an energetic young woman. You will make a good addition to our family. Perhaps we will even breed you."

I knew this was his way of hurting me but I also knew that this was not an idle threat. I fought again as the device was put over my head but many more hands were nearby to hold me still.

The last thing I saw was Hamilton smiling at me as he held something like a remote control unit in his hand.



-------

Chapter 10 Stan's story


Stan was working in 'Arachnid III' when he sensed a low level hum reaching his mind. At the same time Emily and Stephanie fell to the ground. Quickly looking around with the cameras he saw Jordan and then Jessica do the same thing. Turning quickly he saw Christopher and Daniel already on the ground.

It took a second to understand that we were under attack. The warning was valid. I zoomed in with the cameras and saw that my family was still living. It all had to do with that hum I heard. My helmet must protect me from whatever it was.

I took a few seconds to consider what to do before racing to the storage room. I brought out the test helmets we made in the last year to block mental emanations. I quickly slipped these on Jessica and Jordan but the rest had heads that were too small.

We had the powder aluminum, gold, iron as well as beryllium, cobalt, indium, tin as well as the compounds of silver chromate that worked much better. Now was not the time to do this.

My spider body loaded the people around me onto a farm wagon and then I hurriedly gathered up the pack and students that were also hurt by this attack. I looked around for more people but none were close and it would be dangerous to gather them.

I loaded all of the silver chromate we had and then the other less efficient compounds then two large first aid kits we kept nearby. We needed weapons so I took everything we had in the small hidden arsenal and then looked at the armour. It was too much for one load.

I pulled the farm wagon through the orchard and away from the house. I was sure that our home was the target. As I increased the distance from the house, the humming got progressively less.

I was also sure that nobody at the house had a helmet on and they would have been hit like those around me had been.

I came to the public road and saw a great many cars parked nearby and these had to be the people that attacked us. There were no cars driving by and I made it to the tarmac with only a little difficulty. Two kilometres away I had to wait for some cars to pass then I raced down another farm lane and into a wood lot.

The hum was not heard now. I unloaded the wagon and then slowly started to remove my helmet. The hum was not gone. It was distracting but not quite painful at this distance. It also seemed to interfere with my ability to communicate.

I used my cell phone and called Dad. When he answered I said, "The farm is under attack. There is some sort of mental device that knocked all of the kids out and even the students and pack members in our lab. They are still alive and look to be only unconscious. I don't know for sure. The interference is not allowing me to link to them.

"I loaded all I could onto the apple wagon and pulled it to the woodlot on the Stamford farm. The only reason I was not hit was because I was wearing the helmet for 'Arachnid III'. I doubt if anybody is conscious at the house."

I waited until Dad said, "Thanks Son, you did a great job. Now tell me all the small details."

I put my control helmet back on and for three minutes I put into words what my mind could have covered much better in a few seconds.

Dad said, "I'll send out the warning, Son. You did a great job and I'm proud of you."

Dad hung up and I opened a first aid kit and broke an ammonia ampoule under Jessica's nose. When she started to respond, I moved the liquid to Jason and then Peter the first of the pack.

The three started to come around but it took a few minutes. They were in a lot of pain. I used my healing on them as best as I could.

Peter recovered first and said verbally after finding that he could not speak mentally without causing a lot more pain, "What happened?"

"There was some sort of mental attack. That hum you feel, got strong for a minute then decreased in power to what it is now."

"You have to warn the others."

"I did."

"Good, now I want to get up." Peter saw the helmets in the wagon and said, "Your helmet saved you?"

"Yes."

"With this interference, I want to wear one too."

Peter worked to wake up the rest but my cousins were hurt too bad to respond and we let them sleep. I then had to explain everything again to those that were now awake. The device we could sense was odd. It not only struck the pack but the students too. They were not able to communicate and just were given the ability to heal and feel what others felt. Perhaps that was a weak point.

I had a fight on my hands as some of us had to stay here to guard the cousins and the students while some of us had to go back to the lab and gather the armour and possibly 'Arachnid I' and 'Arachnid II'. There were other exoskeletons and the armour to pick up.

Since I was the fastest in my present body, I pulled the team back to the farm the way we came.

We loaded up the wagon and then another but this was pulled by a tractor. This machine would pull both wagons.

Jessica slowly took off her helmet then put it back on. "It's painful but won't knock me out. It certainly will keep me from using my mental powers."

I said, "Try to see through objects and then float."

Jessica did. She floated into the air and said, "I can't see through much with this helmet on."

"Find what you can and cannot do while we make some weapons."

We had lots here to work with. Puke gas and teargas was easy to make and we even had some masks. When we made our own attack, we would not have enough. None of us wanted to kill unless it was absolutely necessary. This meant finding substitutes.

Jessica and Jordan got into the older Arachnid models while I put on a new power pack. We had not left yet when Jordan phoned me from his spider body. "We have more company. Two of our pickups with five people in them. One looks to be Tatum."

"She should have been in New York. Does she look like she's a captive?"

"No and the rest are strangers."

"We better treat them all as hostile."

"Not Tatum, she loves us."

"Jordan, go through the procedures that were set down. We make sure. If we fail then our family may die."

"You're right."

I relayed the info to our group and the pack members made a quick plan. Without being linked, it was sure to be far from optimum.

The pickups stopped in front of the lab and five people got out. Jessica and Jordan scuttled as only spiders could to get behind them. Part of the time they flew to make better time. Everybody from the trucks had a flimsy looking shower cap on and all of them carried pistols even Tatum.

Two strangers entered the lab and somehow knew the code to get the doors open. Just as these two were attacked, Jessica, Jordan and I flew down from above and attacked. Jessica must had slipped into overdrive and was even faster than us.

Tatum had only a chance to see us coming but was unable to even draw her gun before we struck her and then tied her up. If we were wrong and Tatum was on our side then we would apologise.

Peter came out of the lab and said, "It looks like Tatum is with them. This is the group from New York we went to investigate. Let's get out of here and see what we can find out when away from that hum."

The tractor pulled all of us away. The pickups were valuable tools and these were driven out too.

When we got back to the Stamford farm we found Dad, two of our mothers and some pack. I knew Dad was probably mad at me for going back so I kept my helmet on and gave a quick but concise report of what we found.

"You shouldn't have gone back but you all did well."

Christopher, Daniel, Emily and Stephanie were driven away with the students. The captives along with Tatum had to go too because the hum was just too distracting for fine work even at this distance.

Jessica, Jordan and I fought to stay. "Dad, we can provide recognisance which you need. We are small and hard to see as well as having our armour on. We can keep in constant touch by phone."

Mother Kim and Mother Melissa wanted us safe. The three linked as good as they could and then invited us to join. We removed our helmets and presented our case. This also allowed us to give out all the secondary data we had acquired.

Mother Melissa said from her linked position, "You may stay and observe. You are not allowed to attack or even be detected."

We agreed and knew a lot more about how our parents thought about us.

The pickups were used to take away the powdered metals. We had to have some good helmets to block another mental attack. The one Tatum wore was not as good as ours.

We flew back to the farm but stayed low. This saved on battery power. The three of us each had a pistol that the attackers had worn. We could shoot but it was actually our parents orders that we go armed. We swung by the lab and found nothing changed. We picked up more power cells and some surveillance cameras. A parabolic mic was not hard to fashion.

As per our orders, we spoke into the telephones in our helmets. There were a lot of people in or around the house. A half hour later we saw Jacqueline. She had an armed escort but didn't have the look that she was free. A compulsion had to be at work here.

I felt frustrated to be just using my five basic senses now when I was so used to using my mind to search out the truth.

There was talking in the house. We monitored this for two hours until I heard Mother Piper talking. My heart fell because she was giving away very confidential information.

Cars were driven onto the farm property to get them of the public road. I heard Mom call pack members on the phone to come to the farm. My heart sank even more because Mom would have resisted as hard as she could.

I was informed over the telephone that our parents had been called. Mom had sounded calm and even happy but asked them to come home. Each of my parents said they would but had one sort or another of pressing business to take care of.

An hour later we were given the attack plan and then three alternates if this failed. We pulled back and patrolled much more. The positions of all the people on the farm outside of our house were put on a map.

Tatum arrived with her four people. They looked worried. They had agreed to walk back into a situation where they could be killed or recaptured.

Four pickups were ready. Pack members flew low to the ground and tackled enemy patrols. Upwind positions were covered first then the trucks arrived. A tube had been set up that used compressed nitrogen to fire teargas and puke grenades. For a hastily built system they each fired one a second until four hundred grenades were dispensed.

One truck had moved in and shot through the windows of the house. The people inside ran out with wet rags over their faces and a gun in their hands. It hurt me to see Mom doing the same thing.

I could not tell how successful we were but all external guards were to be nullified. People were in all the buildings and not just the house. Some people made it to their cars but marksmen took out their tires.



-------

Chapter 11 Herb's story


Herb Stewart received the disturbing call from his son Stan. He analysed what was happening and set in motion all of the preset plans that had been made by the pack. The pack had been attacked so everybody had to know. Those doing it had some esper ability. Very little had to be actually mentioned, just the names of the plans being followed, the names of those captured and the number and disposition of the enemy.

If the pack had not been so organised, very little of this could have been taken care of.

With some soul-searching I called Jeff on his cell.

"Jeff here."

"Hi Jeff."

"Hi Cuss. What's up?"

"This is important, so just do it without asking foolish questions that I will not answer over the phone."

"Sure, you got it."

"Is Greg and Rose with you?"

"Yes —"

"Drive to the farm but stop at the Tim Horton's restaurant before you get there. We will be there in just a while."

"What's this about?"

"Later." I just hung up the phone and continued with my planning. It was possible that we were being monitored and the rest of us were on our toes. I did not detect any people that were extra nervous but they could be using a scope. This reminded me of a rifle and I worried even more.

I called in to inform the hospital that I had a family emergency and so did Kim and Melissa. Since we had not used this excuse before, we got the time off.

We took taxis and then did a lot of shifting around that we hoped would even confuse an esper. Eventually we met some of the pack members. Nothing had changed in the interim.

We raced to the Stamford's farm and our own perceptions were getting hazy because we could now feel the disagreeable hum. The younger children were apparently out of danger and we questioned everyone about new developments. Most of the pack that had been saved, had gone back to the farm with our children. I was angry at Stan and Jessica for pushing the limits this way.

Only a few minutes later we heard a tractor coming and though it was difficult I knew that it was our children. We were further surprised to see some people that were trussed up. We went to an even higher threat posture until Stan started to explain.

I said, "You shouldn't have gone back but you all did well."

"It had very little danger, Dad. The opposition was outnumbered. They were not prepared in the least. Tatum appears to be under some sort of strong compulsion. She and the four others may know a lot about what is going on."

"We can't make any sort of investigation here."

Stan made a good argument for further monitoring of the situation and after and in-depth study we allowed them to stay. We took the other children, the captives, Tatum and the students away. Only a few pack members stayed.

Stan's idea of a mental helmet had a lot of merit so we took some of the supplies he brought and worked on a plan to retake the farm. Some of the pack would get a shop to spray paint some motorcycle helmets with paint and ground particles of metals as a defence.

We drove away while Kim and Melissa helped me to work on Tatum. It was five minutes later that the interference had abated enough for us to really work.

Kim said, "Tatum's mind was mangled by a butcher. I can see what they wanted to do but they did it so crudely."

Before I could say it, Melissa asked, "Show me, we have to heal her."

The three of us worked for half an hour. Most of that time we were waiting in the Tim Horton's parking lot. Greg, Rose and Jeff were already here and anxiously awaiting my appearance.

As the two women healed Tatum, I searched for what had happened. The pack had been picked off one at a time and programmed to lure the rest into a position where they could be safely altered.

From the questions that were asked of Tatum, the group was much older than the pack. They had been doing this for at least three hundred years. Too many had been burnt at the stake for them to be open about their abilities. Over the years they had gained strength and abilities. They had a much wider arsenal than we did but their abilities were not up to ours. Since Tatum had to pee in a bottle, we knew that they now were taking abicore.

Tatum knew very little because she was treated like a slave. There was a lot she was not allowed to do and her conditioning made her not even want to go against her masters' wishes.

The Hamiltons were very security conscious and there should be very little known about them. With the amount of time they had been around we had to figure that the family was very large and very powerful. They would gain a lot of money and control a lot of politicians. Security concerns would be the reason they were not the obvious leaders.

From scraps of phrases, Tatum thought that the Hamiltons had done this sort of attacks before but usually it was just one or two individuals they had found. This to me meant that they were on the lookout for espers.

The espers they found were assimilated like the Borg but the units were all slaves. The Hamilton family was always the Master.

I went into the coffee shop and the three got up, I bought eight cups of coffee and went to the table. "Hi. Let's go outside."

They all wanted to ask now but held their tongues for a few minutes. Our four cars were in a far corner. Greg could not help himself and asked, "What is all this about, Herb?"

"Piper and the girls encouraged your brains to change just a bit so your abilities were strengthened or started from scratch as in Rose's case."

I paused and they got around this simple idea well enough. "Piper is the leader of what we call the pack. It has many similarities to a dog pack and they are the same as a clan or a tribe. The pack worked on itself and is many times more powerful than they let on."

Jeff said, "Powerful in what way?"

"The pack can read minds and push out their thoughts to those that are not in the pack."

We reached the cars and I handed out the coffees. Greg said, "That is startling news but there is more."

"There sure is."

"Our paranormal abilities extend to being able to hover over the ground or fly."

"I don't believe that."

"Fine but wait. Our telepathy allow us to link as a single unit. This gestalt is very powerful. It's like a super, super computer. All you do is put in all the data and ask questions. If there is not enough data to suggest a solution, certain experiments are called for to gather new results. That is how we can do so well but you have no idea of what we have done or could do. The sad fact is that when we break the connections, we lose the mental power and even forget much of the information we worked on."

Rose said, "Is that how you worked on the DNA and schizophrenia?"

"You're right Rose. We are working on a power source that will end our reliance on petroleum. We are making headway in antigravity but so far a device can only elevate about a centimetre. We made great capacitors that hold much more power than any battery ever thought of."

Jeff said, "Why are those people sleeping in the cars? Are they drugged?"

"I see that this conversation is making you very uncomfortable. We thought we were the only organised group of espers. There were naturals like the Stewart clan. There were others produced by drugs. So far we thought we were basically alone. We were wrong."

They looked at me waiting and I said, "There is a family by the name of Hamilton. We just learned about it in the last hour. They are not as talented as we are but they overcame this discrepancy with electronic devices.

"We heard some odd data from New York and LA. A small team was sent to the former. We thought we were chasing one rogue esper that could endanger all of us. We were found instead.

"The Hamilton family captured the people sent there and put a mental compulsion on them to tell everything they knew. This compulsion would make the person their puppet in every way.

"Tatum came back with a gang of slaves and some Hamiltons to capture the pack. They would take Piper and then take over everyone that arrived later. In time they would get everybody."

Jeff said, "Where is Piper and Jacqueline?"

"The farm was attacked. Everybody but the kids were captured. Stan had on a special helmet that connected to a mental amplifier. This shielded his mind when a device sent out a powerful surge of mental power. It crippled everybody that was an esper and probably all the normals that were nearby too."

I paused for them to absorb what was said. Greg said, "Call out the army and the police."

"If we do that, the world will know of what we are. I want the world safe for us and I want the world safe from us. This can only be done by strong laws and an organisation like the pack to prosecute the rogue espers."

"What are you going to do?"

"We attack of course."

Rose was almost crying. She said, "They have to have guns. You will get killed."

"We developed some good armour but there is not enough for everybody. We can fly when necessary. Teargas and puke gas will be used. We have silenced weapons but we don't want to use them on people. I came to you people for some help in a tactical sense and because when we rescue Jacqueline, she will talk about what happened to her."

Bert was the one to say, "What do you have to fight with?"

Bert and Jeff were not that important to us. We had read the minds of a great many military and political strategists. This knowledge we now had. We wanted the three family members to be part of our group. I was not going to be like the Hamiltons and put a very strong compulsion on them. They already had a weak one and it did not hinder their thinking.

Pack from all over came to take part in the attack. Too many were in LA but we could not wait for them to arrive.

Greg, Rose and Jeff were pulled into a link. They were more of a hindrance but I wanted them here so they figured they helped and to let them understand what we really were.

When the plan was made, we broke up into units. Tatum and then the other four people were allowed to awake. All their old conditioning was removed and their minds started on the road to complete healing. In the meantime they got the standard conditioning we gave everybody that joined us.

Tatum was tired and drawn out. "You have to stop those people. They have my mate and my friends."

Kim held her and said, "We will do everything we can. They have Piper, Ellen and Jacqueline too."

Tatum and then her four assistants agreed to help us. They were going to act the way she had been a few hours ago. They were to try to drug as many of the force as possible and that included our own people that would be fighting us.

The five moved out with new weapons and our drugs. We all hated to see them go into danger but some things had to be risked or we would lose all.

At the right time we tied in with the rest and we moved units into position. When word came back we infiltrated much closer and took out individual sentries. The trucks were allowed to get much closer.

On my mark, they launched a heavy barrage of teargas and puke gas. We had good helmets that stunk of fresh paint and we had all sorts of gas masks that came from every imaginable source.

There were few outside the range of the gas and these we attacked from the air.

Bert said from a position five hundred metres from the battle, "My god, you were not telling me a lie. Your people can fly."

I was busy using radios and cell phones because I could not direct this battle with my mind the way I would like to do.

We hoped for a blitz but the Hamiltons were able to mount a good defence even with the gas.

What frightened me the most was Piper and Ellen racing out of the house. They were armed and I did not think it was to help us.

Pack was nearby and I communicated with difficulty what I was going to do and they fought me.

I ran as fast as I could to the farmhouse while yelling verbally and mentally to Piper. She was shooting people and killing our people. The Arachnids attacked first. She was shocked at the sight but reluctantly brought up her gun and shot at our children. I raced even faster.

Somebody threw a grenade near Piper and she shifted into overdrive and raced around shooting at our children. Ellen was on the ground retching. I raced in and used my hand to knock out Ellen and then I raced to my wife.

Piper turned to me. The gun wavered but came up and she pumped three shots at my chest. I was wearing some armour and this did not even slow me down.

When I got close, she threw the empty gun at me and I was barely able to dodge it. I drove in with a kick and found her suddenly to one side. Her arm came down hard and hit me on the arm. It felt like my arm was broken. I could not avoid falling down and Piper was there to drive her foot into my neck.

The foot came down but hit my chest. Piper flew to one side. Stan, Jessica and Jordan were fighting her. Jessica was the fastest and I had to figure she was in overdrive too.

I tried to get up but the three children were doing much better than I could.

All of a sudden, a blast of energy hit me. I was on fire but mercifully I blanked out.

-------

I woke up in Greg's arms. He had a rifle beside him. I looked around for the children and Piper and only saw the crumpled exoskeletons. The hum was gone and I tried to say, "What happened?" but the helmet blocked my thoughts. "What happened?"

Bert said, "We were knocked out for a while. We were a lot further away. I saw that gang sorting through the people and putting them in their cars. When I saw them trying to take away the children I think I killed a few. They raced away."

"Where's Piper?"

"I think they took her."

"Help me get my helmet off."

Greg helped and I sat up and called all of the pack. Some were actually far away. Their job was to follow any that got away and they were now racing south and probably toward one of the three border crossings.

My arm was fractured but not bad enough to get a splint if I worked on it right. Piper must have had a broken hand. It occurred to me that she may have done this intentionally so she would not be able to shoot.

Greg got me up and I went around to my children. All of them were unconscious but still relatively healthy. Jeff and Rose were working hard trying to pour their healing power into our people. Some were beyond help.

We helped those that could use our assistance and then we worked on the other group. It was not long until I found that not all those left were slaves, some were Hamilton members.

I dove into these brutally to find out what I needed to know. They had an innate resistance but the life of my wife was at stake.

It did not take long to get the general plan and then the numbers of those that had come. As the pack arrived or were revived, we linked but not all of us. We pushed through one Hamilton after another. The family was paranoid and they kept many secrets from each other. There was enough to know that the family was scattered all over the United States and Europe. Some lived in Canada but we had never found them.

One good sight was Jeff holding Jacqueline. She was unconscious still and was hit by the full blast without a helmet.

Within a half hour of waking, we were driving south. The pack that was following the Hamiltons, reported that their quarry had split up. I could only think that they would try for all of the border crossings. It was a foregone conclusion that the Hamiltons had phoned the remainder of their family about what happened.

An hour later we got in line to cross and found a long line of cars trying to cross into the US. I could see now that they had just commanded the border guards to stop us. We headed west to Gananoque. This was a near the Thousand Island Bridge but here it was boats that were searched for illegal aliens or contraband.

It was a long day but as yet it was not dark. We did some of our own compelling and got some boaters from both countries to ferry us across. The border guards just ignored us as we went onto the shore.

We did the same thing again with drivers but we only went to the nearest place we could charter a plane. Outside of New York was a fortified stronghold that the Hamiltons would surly head to. Some of the pack members went to find the cars but the rest had to hope we were going to the right place.

Private aircraft flew us where we wanted and the owners found money to pay for our trip and the feeling that they had saved a child by their efforts. They left happy.

More intelligence came in from the pack on the farm. It listed who had died and who may make it. Kim and Melissa were beside me and they wanted to be there too so they could administer to those that need it. We were after our mate though and this was an even higher priority.

We rented cars and drove to the estate. It took an hour and a half but we were at least three hours ahead of those arriving.

There were only forty three of us. We went over the information we learned about this place and then what we saw. The latter did not help because it was now dark.

We flew high because the house used radar but not over fifteen metres. There was another radar on the roof that would detect people coming in with gliders. There was a narrow band we could use that should be safe.

The house was stone and very solid. The windows did not open but we were lucky and found a man in a uniform coming back with a child. We did not have time to place any compulsions on them but the chauffeur/bodyguard knew that even an excited person approaching would keep the doors closed. There was also thermal imaging.

We found the sensors before the child entered the house. We were hovering near the wall while invisible but only Kim was able to slip inside before the door closed.

In the next half hour, Kim read minds. The house had sensors all over and many were designed to react if anybody projected a thought. This had to happen for a compulsion to be made. The good news was that we were right about the Hamiltons that got away coming here.

Kim read thoughts of many of those in the house. Many more could not be reached because it was even more difficult to get to them. Even with all our abilities, we would not be able to get much further. This section of the house had to be attacked separately. As much as I hated it, we had to work as two groups to crack two separate targets.

Kim was able to find areas that were so called free zones where mental emanations would not trigger alarms but these areas were heavily protected. The house was so well guarded that she had to borrow a Hamilton phone to call me outside. An unauthorised cell phone call would trigger the alarm.

I picked up the phone and said verbally, "Hello."

"Hi honey. I got lots to say and I have to whisper." She went on and told us everything she had found. This was going to be a hard nut to crack.

I was surprised and said, "How come you are sending out thoughts that you are not there and this is not triggering the alarm?"

There was a pause then she said, "I have no idea." All of a sudden she said, "I have to go!"

I was worried and ready to attack but Kim would warn us. The phone rang again and I eagerly answered, "Yes!"

"A Doctor Heslip will be coming with a nurse. Give them a compulsion before they get here."

Some of the pack raced off when they were given enough information. Fifteen minutes later a long black car pulled up and both the doctor and the nurse got out. There was a lot of room between the two and four of us managed to float in. Two more came in while the nurse blocked the door from closing.

The doctor ran off to treat an old man that had slipped on a pencil and his head had hit the wall hard. The doctor treated the patient and the nurse had to go to the car twice to bring more equipment. Each time six more of us got in.

There was not much time left and we investigated the wiring of the house. We found out that the area for the higher servants was not extensively monitored for mental emanations. We took advantage of this by getting the cooks to follow our orders and not the Hamiltons. It was actually easy once the people saw us as Hamiltons.

If the new arrivals entered with their helmets, they would see us because our commands not to see us would not work. Piper may or may not come in and if she did, she may detect us.

From a kilometre away, we were all kept abreast of any new information. Some was sent through the auspices of sign language from a window. Other times it was phone calls made from Hamilton phones.

The youngsters were sent to bed and the adults got sleepy from the small amounts of drugs we managed to get into their drinks. There was not enough yet to make anyone suspicious.

The other team was lucky. The change of shift had come and people had entered and left the other portion. This allowed our people to enter the other portion of the house.

Phone calls came to the Hamiltons but the majority of them went to security. When we could, we struck the Hamiltons and put them to sleep. The same thing was done to most of the servants but some were in their rooms and not accessible. A similar process was being used in the basement and the security wing. It was good, because the approaching cars were only ten minutes away.

I managed to finally get into one particular locked and alarmed room. I found a security centre if the other centre failed or was taken. The computer was the main feature and I knew that it would have security up the yazoo. It was doubtful if even Nicolas could defeat this system before our arrivals came.

We prepared the best we could. The two main threats were the psionic device that would blast us into unconsciousness and Piper. She was death on wheels because of her intelligence and speed.

We had our helmets but we knew that they would not be enough if the device was triggered again. It was not just the one or more arriving in the cars, but the house itself had many of these devices within the grounds.

I had an epiphany. The butler was unconscious now and I brought him into the room. It did not take long before he saw me as the most senior and the most powerful Hamilton.

I hurriedly commanded, "Open the front door in preparation for those that will arrive."

"Yes, sir. Immediately."

The man left to carry out the order and I had the pack leave the house. we were not too soon, because the cars pulled in and parked in front of the long multi level garage.

From around the property bullets crashed into the Hamiltons. We aimed to wound if possible. The alarms went off and armed men came pouring out to fight us. Each had a helmet on now. Concentrated fire came from the house too and we were hit many times but none of the rounds were powerful enough to penetrate the armour.

Piper burst out of one of the cars but she was not able to do anything before I felt a stab of pain through my mind.

-------

I woke up in Kim's arms. She said, "You're ok and so is Piper."

I wanted to go back to sleep and Kim put the ammonia under my nose again. "Get up, you had enough of a rest."

It took a day to process everyone on the property and then it was because we were now Hamiltons. More and more of the pack arrived in the next few days and they removed all the old conditioning and put in our own.

The Hamilton presence in the US was much stronger than even I had thought. Nicolas flew in on a helicopter and worked with the computers. A lot of data had been lost. When this sort of alarm went off the computers' hard drives were destroyed. This could all be built up again from records that were off site.

The supposed official records of the Hamiltons were filled with lies and false leads. We found the truth and then took almost all the electronic cash the family had. This made our now seven point seven billion dollar nest egg look puny.

It was a year and a half later that we took over the majority of the Hamilton empire. To do this we had seven small battles and three large ones. In all 97 pack died but three times that died in Hamiltons. Their people suffered nearly a thousand deaths and we were trying to limit our damages.

The government of the United States went on an even more warlike profile. The Hamiltons had simply told the leaders what to do and they did it. Soon we had to do the protecting of them ourselves. At no time was anything mentioned about espers.

From all over Canada and the United States, reports came in of miraculous things happening. School children were healing the sick with the use of their minds. Christians thought of the second coming until the Jews, Arabs and the Asiatics began to do the same thing.

Our world was changing but this one small step was the hardest one to take.



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Book Four

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Chapter 1


Vilchjo, my computer friend woke me up gently with a buzz that slowly increased in volume. He spoke in our language of Esperanto, "Time to get up Michjo. You have work to do."

I had a small stretch and said, "Thanks Vilchjo. That was kind of you."

"Think nothing of it, Michjo."

The people of Pack countries were always very polite to one another and over the years this carried over to the entities that inhabited computers. All of us had the esper ability to heal but more importantly we were empathetic. We felt each others joy, sorrow or pain. To hurt others was to hurt yourself. We grew out of our barbaric thinking quite early. Immediate feedback is a wonderful learning tool.

I walked through the house and out onto the patio. Our home was a kilometre above the surface of Toronto, North America.

My mother Brava was already fixing my breakfast though she did not have to do this. She liked to remain with us and help her children even though they could do this sort of thing by themselves.

She said, "Good morning Michjo. How are you?" I could feel the love she felt for me and I returned what I could to her.

"Not bad Mom. I had a late night with the friends. Thank you for asking. How are you today? You look as beautiful as ever."

She smiled at me. There was no need to check if I was lying because she knew how I felt. A son loved his parents and the love was returned.

"I'm doing fine but I'm waiting for your father and our wives to get back."

"I would like to see them too."

Mom went a little absent minded thinking about our family then she recovered abruptly. She changed the subject by saying, "Did you have fun last night?"

She was the same as us when she was young. She went to parties and had a happy life. "Sure. We went to Yellowknife for their carnival. There was a lot of music and art. It was lots of fun."

"I haven't been to that carnival in years. Did Juvela and Orabela get to go with you?"

Juvela was a friend of mine since I was a baby. We went to the same school. We studied and learned together. She and I taught each other about sex and love at the age of seven. Sex ed was not even one of our courses until the next year.

Mom had watched us and quietly gave advice and encouragement. All we could do is use our fingers and mouths but that was enough at the time. When Sex ed really started, we switched to other classmates but usually found that we were the happiest when it was just Orabela, Juvela and me.

Orabela was a year younger than the two of us. Something resonated in the three of us when we were together. It was similar to what happened in some families. The famous Piper and Kim Compton found something like this when they met Herb Stewart. Ours was not nearly as strong though.

When puberty hit the three of us were making love all the time and our parents had to separate us so we could study. Eventually they had to use the carrot of allowing us time to enjoy our bodies only if we did well in our studies.

I said, "Juvela and Orabela were working at their archeological dig in Chile. They just made a discovery and didn't want to leave just yet. I could tell by their words and gestures that they really wanted to be with me."

"That's too bad. Did you hear anything about the foreign service yet?"

I had graduated last month with a Fellowship Degree in Economics. Only North America, Japan, some smaller Asiatic countries and roughly a third of Africa were Pack countries. The EU was an associate member but the rest of the world was still taking a wait and see attitude. Money was not used in our area but it certainly was in the rest of the world. If I was going to help I had to know how the people thought.

The Pack had ripped out the crooked politicians in Canada and then took on the criminals and the bad police. The jails got very full for a while. The Pack came out of hiding a bit at a time and offered the world a Utopia.

Canada was usually very conservative but many politicians were Pack members by that time. Canada changed almost exponentially. One of the ways to distance ourselves from the rest of the world was to adopt Esperanto as the official language of Canada with English and French as secondary languages. Pionic energy, derived from the universe but locked away in four particular dimensions, soon powered Canada.

The riddle of gravity was cracked and given to the world. The Pack used this to produce anti-gravity. Flying transports carried people anywhere at the price of an hours pay. Space craft flew to the planets on excursion flights.

Raw materials were recovered. Materials were extracted from seawater and everything that could be recycled, was. Fresh clean water was then sent to irrigate the great deserts of the world. Food became very cheap. The Pack modified most of the food and made it the healthiest it could be and able to live in a much more hostile environments. Pesticides and fungicides were not needed and fertilisers only a little.

A new construction material called benasso filled the same duties as concrete. It's tensile strength rivalled the very best aluminum alloys. Houses, water and sewage pipes were made of this. The expected life of this material was estimated to be three and a half millennia. This discovery was almost as important as counteracting gravity.

The economy in Canada crashed but everybody ate well. The people had almost everything for free. People flocked back to school. Others took up hobbies to keep busy. The population became bored and tried to give back some of what they took. The population made gardens and gave away the produce. They were paid with thanks and a song or a painting. The most exquisite furniture was made and cherished for generations.

Dealing in the market was fun and rewarding. When I studied the world before the Pack came to power I found that people just traded money and left. This was not the way a human should interact with his fellows.

After ten years the Pack offered to help parents have the best children possible. The public was not ready for this but in five years they saw the children that were born had IQs one third higher than average. They did not have diseases and in fact all the garbage in out DNA was removed along with the inherited weaknesses.

The children were called superkids at that time. They excelled in sports, academic subjects and empathy. The pack gave everybody the ability to heal themselves or others. We all felt the pain others felt so we were hesitant to cause discomfort.

Parents came more and more to the clinics, especially the famous Jamison Clinic. It was not just Canadians but parents from every nation. When the first child was sixteen the world knew not to fear these children.

The United States was the first associate member and got the energy grid placed over its cities. They got their own means of producing the power too. Little by little they aligned themselves with Pack policies until they were basically the same as Canada.

Mexico was harder simply because so few people were well educated. Their progress was slow but in thirty years had caught up to the other two countries.

The population growth in all three countries slowed but mostly in Mexico. People were assured to live a healthy and productive life until at least 90. Those that had been tinkered with would have another thirty years tacked onto that figure.

Though we were three separate countries the distinctions fell until it was like going to another state or province. Everything necessary to life was provided for free. The extras people made were for themselves or they simply gave them away.

I had gone to university to get a degree so I could help the people that were not in the Pack countries. My IQ was only normal or what would be 142 in the old system. The trouble was that many people wanted to help and there was only a few official ways of doing this.

"No Mom. They are going to wait until everybody gets a chance to graduate and then they will make their choices."

"Maybe Uncle Herb can help?"

Uncle Herb was named after the famous Herb Stewart. Our family legend said that Herb Stewart was the father of one of our ancestors. My seven times grandmother was one of the students in the Pack. She never became a full member.

There was a slip in the protection of the contraceptives of the time. When she suspected she was pregnant she left the main Pack to do some of the necessary work. She stayed away from Herb and the main body of the Pack because she wanted her baby to be raised in a more normal surroundings.

My six times great grandfather went into clean up of the toxic sites. It was said that his IQ was near what the great Piper. Over the generations, the average IQ dropped but we think it was also Pack policy to not have too many super geniuses outside of the Pack. The Pack even had to cut back because it was rumoured that the Pack members would stray if they separated for too long.

The family thought that Herb Stewart never knew that he had another son but it was possible. He liked his kids to be independent and learn as much as they could.

"I wouldn't ask Uncle Herb. If he said anything then I would be seen as using family ties to get ahead."

"I did not mean that way. He knows some of the details you must know to succeed. Everybody has their slant on this and Herb's is just one more person to ask."

I felt my mother's pain and regretted my words. Ethics was a strong force within the Pack countries and an even stronger force in our family. We helped all we could and asked as little as possible from others.

"I'm sorry Mom. I know that. I'm just worried. All I can do is work hard and let the board see how diligent I am."

Mom said, "Sometimes it takes years for those decisions."

"I know Mom. I want to go work with Dad full time till a position opens up for me."

Mom gave her big smile and said, "What happened to our waltzing troubadour? You were going to sing your way across the EU and paint pictures to rival Michelangelo."

"I was twelve at the time Mom. I'm nineteen now and not a kid."

Mom hugged me and then kissed me. I could feel the love coming from her and tried to push out my own feelings to her. She said, "I know that Michjo, but your still my youngest son."

I kissed her back and said, "And your oldest son too."

"You're also my favourite son."

"And you're my favourite mother."

"I would hope so but what about Katida and Rava?"

"I love them too but you gave me life."

Mom seemed to shoot out her love in a flood that threatened to overwhelm both of us. Being an empath was the best thing in the world but it did have its problems on accession.

Katida and Rava also married Dad. Mom only had two children. My sister Vespera was four years younger and going to school at the University of Toronto the same as I had. Dad was not alone in having a non standard family. Only 22% of the families in Pack countries were of one man and one woman. The size of a family gave it strength just like the Pack and like the Pack we could not get too big or we would loose sight of some of the members.

Katida and Rava had four children total and they were my brothers and sisters just like Vespera. Those children were also older than me and currently working in California cleaning up the damage made by the 49ers. That was 1849 and 381 years ago. The mercury and arsenic was still in the water and polluting the land and the ocean.

Our family had been cleaning up after humanity for two hundred years this summer. The original Pack members gave us the machinery to do so. Over the years they gave us more information and we used it to improve our equipment.

Dad ran one of the cleaning/construction units. This command platform had many auxiliaries to assist it. To take on different work, we just used different drones. Basically a command platform was a living unit for four crew members. It contained the computers that controlled whatever units were needed.

It was powered by the smallest black hole possible. Where we worked beampower was not always accessible. Besides we used a lot at some times which caused problems for others that shared the power with us.

We flew to the area that needed to be cleaned and released the required drones. They were controlled by one of the five auxiliary computers in the command unit. The first assayed the structure of our planet. If we were cleaning, they found the extent of the damage to our planet. They also assessed the surrounding land for what it might have been at one time so it could be put back the way it needed to be.

Other drones worked as singletons or in groups. These worker drones formed a plane of energy that could cut into the soil on land or in the bottom of a river and then pull up all the buried contamination. Other units were downstream filtering the water so none of the disturbed material go away from us.

A scrubber unit cleaned everything and threw back the cleaned rocks and soil. The contamination was processed and the pure metals saved in sealed containers. In an hour, a single construction unit could process up to 1700 tonnes of material.

Benasso could be made by a modified scrubber unit. We were working on making the one unit do both jobs but we ran into difficulties. This very high strength building material was used everywhere in the world now. The construction units had their own force fields and the benasso would be put within the forms and harden in seconds, even underwater. Intricate construction required specialised form units. These provided a shape for the benasso and made the material harden quicker.

We constructed many public buildings in Africa out of this material. In NA we tried to bury the construction and then pipe in both natural sunlight and fresh air for ventilation. In existing cities we built upward.

My grandfather was the man that built the Stewart building in New York. It is two and a half kilometres tall. There are homes and businesses in it and some people have not left the building for years. It recycled water and waste and even grew it's own food. The sad thing is that the building was superceded by a building constructed by another unrelated family six months later.

I was going to study the data coming in. Dad was currently in the Sacramento Valley of California. It was a lot easier for my family because we had implants in our heads that allowed us to interface with the computers and the entities that inhabited them.

Vilchjo lived in my computer. I placed the small pendent sized unit on my desk and said, "You there, Vilchjo?"

Almost microscopic units rose from the unit and multiple coloured lasers played across the one metre square screen. I saw what looked like a person of my age and gender. In a way he was my alter ego. If I needed to talk out a problem then Vilchjo would help. He was connected up to the world wide net of computers so he did not have to rely on me for companionship.

"Hi Michjo. What's up?"

"Hi Vilchjo. Would you please interface with Dad's computer? I want to see the problems he's having at the worksite."

The two of us went over what we saw and quizzed Dad's computer on some points. There were a lot of hot spots still. Mainly it was mercury contamination. We had worked out many strategies in the last two hundred years on what to do. I made my own strategy from memory to see just how it would work.

There were seven major computers in the Command Unit. One was in overall command and one worked exclusively on the containment vessel that housed the black hole. The rest gave their own analysis and tried to help me see what could be done to optimise the process. I was not wrong in the ways I chose, I was just not perfect. The crew of three or four were there for human reasons. The computers and the units could do this alone but then man felt to be a useless accessory. The computers were far brighter than the personal units we wore. They were all nice people though.

Computer entities were constructed by the Pack with some major thinking. The entities did not think of themselves as alive but the humans of today thought of them as if they were.

Vilhelmo, my father, said, "Are you going to make it out here with your crew, Michjo?"

Appointments were promises and some people would rather die than go back on their word. "I'll make it on time. I have to see some friends tonight and I can fly out at noon tomorrow."

"That's good to hear. Your mother miss me?"

I had to smile at him and said, "You better take some simulants Dad. Mom has plans for your body." Dad's three wives rotated so one was home for us all the time. Since we got older this was not needed but the women liked the chance to whet their appetites by a bit of abstinence.

Mom had her own friends and she was never in need. Almost every night she visited other families and made love to the individuals. Dad as well as Katida and Rava did this too but only when they could. We were involved with a nebulous super family that changed as people had to move away but were usually replaced by some newcomers.

"Those are the type of plans I like."

That night I went out with my own friends. Most were people I went to school with as a kid or later in university when I started to specialise. Some nights it was non-stop sex but usually we sang the songs we wrote or played our instruments. I played most of the instruments but the guitar and the clarinet were my favourites. There were many fun times when we sat around a fire and I played a harmonica.

The people listening to me, loved the music and I could feel this love coming from them. Usually this made me play even better than I thought I could.

I was fair as a painter or a sculpturer but there were many people far better than I was. Tonight was going to be an art exhibit we would be going to. Orabela and Juvela would not be here and I missed them tremendously.

At six, I ran up the steps to the top of the building. There was an elevator but a healthy person was supposed to do this to stay in shape. Nobody liked to see people that let their bodies go. I was in good shape. I wrestled in university and played lacrosse and soccer. I was just plain looking though.

The Pack's manipulation of our genes made our minds work well, our bodies worked well and or faces were symmetrical. When I took Pack history as a child I saw how odd people looked then. Their eyes were just a bit too big or their nose not quite high enough. It took only a few small alterations and a person's face and body looked the way they should.

At the top of the building, I ran over a long bridge to a building east of ours. A bus stopped a few minutes later and I found a seat. There were lots of interesting girls on the bus and they were eyeing the guys. One looked at me longer and I could feel her need to be made less lonely. Almost by reflex I got up and walked over.

"Hi, I'm Michjo. I'm going down to Union Station to get a flight to Buenos Aires. We are going to look at some South American artists and then have a meal. Would you like to come?"

"Buenos Aires! I'd love to go."

"That's great."

"I'm Miela by the way. I'm a 14b7r16m in relationships."

I smiled at her. "I'm a 15b7r15m+."

She studied me to see if I was lying but few ever did. "Hmm, that's nice for me. I like the guys to play with my butt. What do you like?"

"Well I like what you like. But I like the rest of you too."

"Ohhh," Miela shook a bit in joy and said, "I'm going to like this."

When I went to university I had to take four years of family planning. This would allow me to have children when I was ready to settle down. Part of the course was Sex ed but not what we had taken previously. We worked hard to give pleasure to our partners.

Cavemen would just insert their members in their mate and in a few seconds fill her. As time went on man tried to better his record. It was only with the advent of the Pack that women were truly free to choose. Now if a man did not work hard as a lover, the women would find a better man. The poor lover got mercy sex but he knew what it was.

Nowadays, the female students marked the males progress. The results were tabulated and available to all. I was not the best by any means but I was above eighty percent of the males in the university.

We got off the bus on top of Toronto's New Union Station Space Port. I came a bit early to talk to my friends that would be travelling with me. Miela pulled me to a wall and dropped to her knees and undid my pants. The garment hit the floor at the same time my cock hit the back of her mouth.

This was not that uncommon and it was a way for a woman to stake her claim. I could still feel some residual sorrow in her and perhaps tonight she would tell me about it. At the moment it was hard to think because she was doing some wonderful things to me.

We were almost late for the one hour flight to Buenos Aires. I introduced Miela to some of my friends. When they started to get busy with each other, I put Miela in a seat and picked her legs up. She screamed eight times before we reached our destination.

Miela had been to this city almost as much as I had. The nightlife in the city was termed wild before the Pack appeared. It had to get much wilder to match us. Very few people used drugs now. The Pack found anybody that sold the substances and turned them in. Alcohol was the only intoxicant allowed but it was frowned on if somebody overindulged. If somebody did it too often, his or her friends would put their hands on them and did their best to heal them. As far as I knew there were no alcoholics in the Pack countries.

I used my computer to take many pictures. The sound recorder was on all the time and I sought out new material for myself. The art we came to see was exceptional and went from one extreme to the other.

Around midnight, Miela and I met Jennifer. She was a student from Australia. Miela liked what she saw so we rented a large room with the rest of my friends. Australia was close to being an associated state but was still foolishly concerned that the Pack was going to turn into dictators. Jennifer was not that way at all, in fact she liked two people to take control and make her body do such wonderful things. My friends were polite and did their best to make the two welcome while I said hello to the rest.

I found that Miela and Jennifer liked me in their bum but I actually liked to be parked next door better.

In my quest to make the ladies interested more in me, I built up my body. I was in good shape from lacrosse and wrestling but I was not aggressive enough for sports. It was the look of the body that counted though.

When young I got drunk and got a tattoo. The girls loved it. Few people marred their body these days but the decoration was very common a century ago. Mine was in multiple colours and it seemed to move as if a separate entity.

We never got a chance to sleep. Both women were bushed but they did not outdo me. A man does not admit defeat so easily.

We had a breakfast then had a few hours sleep. When I got up I moved Jennifer closer to Miela so they could wake up together. Both girls needed a friend and I was happy to have met them.

I made it to the space port and flew to LA. Nikolao was there to meet me and we flew in one of Dad's flitters to one of the many small towns outside of Sacramento. We landed near the market to pick up fresh fruit, vegetables and meat.

Nikolao said, "What are we going to get other than the staples?"

"I want some hot peppers for some new dishes I've tried."

"Mmmm, sounds good. Buy some extra. I hear the ibex is particularly good in this region."

We did not usually eat much meat or even any living animal. The pack dramatically altered almost all of our food. The plants were induced to be very prolific and then provide all we needed to sustain ourselves. They were also able to fight off disease and thrive in conditions that would have killed the unimproved species.

The Pack also knew that its attack on the spectre of death would cause major problems. Birth control hormones were produced by all the improved plants. This was one of the reasons some families wanted to go back to nature. In this situation the family had to consciously regulate how productive they would be.

There was something in man that made him want to hunt to get his protein. It was a good idea, because some species of wild animals would get in trouble by over grazing or eating too much of one type of game. Man now kept the balance through the hormones in plants and our own predation. It was good that we could not feel their pain.

The market was large and the aisles were wide. The food was spread out on homespun blankets as it was done hundreds of years ago. A great many were here to get their meal for the next day. Nikolao and I split the list and we both went to get our supplies.

I stopped at a stall with at least a hundred types of hot peppers. By just stopping the proprietor said, "Welcome to my shop. Would you like a cool beer or a glass of wine. I made them both."

One did not hurt others feelings and I smiled and said, "Why thank you, Sir. My name is Nikolao. I would love to taste your wine. Please tell me about your products."

The man shook my hand like I had sung a long ballad in his honour. "My name is Alechjo. Please have a seat out of the sun. I will pour you some of my wine."

The man poured both of us a glass of red wine from a handmade glass bottle and corked the bottle. I raised my glass and said, "To your continued good health Alechjo."

"And to yours, Michjo."

We talked for ten minutes as we sampled the wine. It was rather good and I told Alechjo as much. He immediately handed me a handmade wicker basket and put three unopened bottles of wine in it.

I gave the usual words that this was too much but Alechjo would hear nothing of this. I took out my harmonica which was enough for the man to ask me to play a song. I played some that I had heard in Buenos Aires yesterday.

The man clapped his hands and so did the nearby stall keepers and shoppers. Soon I had others with harmonicas out and some with other instruments. We played three more songs until I felt that Alechjo considered himself much more than paid.

I asked about his peppers and I was given all I wanted and then a lot more. This time I took out a stylus and drew a picture of the man as if he were displaying his bottle of wine to somebody coming into the stall.

It took four hours to get all we needed. It was not because of what we had to get but the need to interact with the people of the market. Everybody ate a healthy diet and this required the food to be fresh and tasty. Nobody liked old food. I was conscious of the time but I had counted on this when we planned our shopping expedition.

We flew to a location 300 klicks north of Sacramento where the command vessel was currently operating. We set up a campsite and fetched all the food we wanted and received a lot of other produce we had not even requested. The wine was good but I also had three kilos of rice and seven of wheat. The latter had to be ground to be used but many people did just that. We did not have a grinder though.

The perishables were stored in a collapsible stasis unit. Some of the gifts were tripe and liver. We did not want many products but we were obliged to thank the giver and take them. Perhaps I could find a good recipe for them.

When Dad and my other mothers' shift ended, they met us at our campsite.

I felt loved by all three of them and gave them back all I had to give.

Rava was a diminutive woman and asked, "How was your trip to Buenos Aires, Michjo?"

I remembered the love I felt and said, "It was fun. I met two nice people."

"I'm glad to hear that. Your mother worries about you and so do we. You don't seem as quick to make friends. You go for quality."

"Dad went for quality and see what he got."

I had three parents very happy with me. In truth I did not mix as well with strangers but I was far more ambitious than those raised in non Pack countries.

The next day, my parents rotated back to Toronto and our crew took over. It was fun to be back at work. We had a great sense of accomplishment and knew that the world appreciated what we did even if very few ever heard of us.

Nikolao loved history, music and especially dance. Mirinda was a tall redhead with a beautiful smile that studied biological engineering just for fun. Luksa was shorter and she made me tingle. She loved too cook and was considered one fine chef. She was an artist like me but she liked to sculpt more. She was doing more and more in stone but she still liked to work with metals. She made all of us gold and platinum necklaces that looked very beautiful. Last night we had made love until the alarm said we had to sleep.

The next day at our stations, Nikolao said, "Look at the readings on unit five!"

We all looked. Nikolao was excited so we tried to be too. Mirinda said with her sexy voice, "Gold looks nice. I can't see why the ancients actually fought over it." History told Nikolao that gold was valuable but that was a long time ago. People could get what they wanted for jewellery just by asking for it. Synthetic gems were the same way and we had all made some in school. She was also complimenting the work in gold that Luksa had given us.

This was enough of a lead for Nikolao and he said, "The readings say there is 800 kilograms in that stretch alone. At one time that would have been an unbelievable fortune."

Luksa said, "The history books say there was 1,500 tonnes taken from this area. If this is a sample, then perhaps the total may go many times higher since we are going down nearly eight metres."

"Too bad its not palladium. We have to find a bit more for the Celeste." I could feel Nikolao joy just at the mention of the giant Pack colony ship. It was seven kilometres long and would not be completed for another ten years. It had all the Pack could give it but it was still sublight. The Pack figured it would be a fifty years before the dimensions were understood enough for a possible drive to be made. They then figured it would be another twenty years to get a ship to pass through the dimensions.

I did not ask Nikolao about his application to work on the ship because it would be a sore spot. All four of us had gone to Luna and built structures out of moon rock. The mineral content was not very good and we had to filter a lot of rock to make our benasso.

We had a school trip one time and went to the base on Venus. That was fun but tedious. There was not that much to do when we got there. None of us had made it to the large base on Mars but we were hoping to go some day. The Pack had seeded both planets with microbes that would break down some of the compounds in the atmosphere and make it breathable for humans. A giant shield was already in place that kept the gases from escaping but they were looking at increasing the surface gravity some day.

Earth captured thousands of tonnes of water each year from meteorites. The water had accumulated over the last few billion years. The pack was now transporting that to the other planets to make them livable.

We came back to Earth in a way and talked of the Yana, Cottonwood, Maidu and Wintu natives that used to live in this area. They had been hurt grievously by the white man's greed and bigotry.

Luksa had a strong opinion on injustice and talked about how the invaders had used African slaves and then natives to help them get the yellow metal we were getting so easily. In the process, they used sluice mining techniques to wash millions of tons of soil into the river and then to the ocean. When they had to go after the gold bound to the quartz, they used mercury and arsenic.

We cleaned up all the heavy metals and the extracting units separated the atoms. We picked up some palladium which we were all proud of but also a lot of gold, silver, lead, copper, zinc, mercury, and arsenic. This total was 1,870,000 tonnes by the time we finished this stage of the reclamation project.

It took us two and a half months to do this and we rotated with the family two times. When not working we hiked the trails and studied the local history. In the last hundred years the bronze plaques were supplemented with a computer interface so we could download the pertinent files.

Some natives or people with some native blood lived in villages much like their ancestors. They were trying to keep their heritage alive. We talked to them and even tried to learn a bit of their languages.

We were proud to know that we changed some of the figures for recovered minerals even though their value was not very high. Once the world knew that we could get all the gold we wanted from seawater, the prices fell dramatically. Extracting the metals on land was a lot faster if we found a rich deposit and it was not deep.

We began the building of a new university campus as our next project. This was a Pack request so we were going to make it the best we could. The drawings showed a small campus on only fifty square kilometres of land. It would be almost entirely underground and completely self-sufficient.

A small antigrav railway would be the first to go in as it was going to be on the lowest level. The university would go over this and in the back would be the homes for the students. The now cleaned silt we had taken from the river bottom was used to cover the complex so they looked like hills. This soil was compacted then more put on. Trees and shrubs would be added along with windmills and solar pipes that took natural light through fibre optics to everywhere.

I loved this project but had to leave when our turn was up. All I could do was see what was happening on my own computer. Dad promised to make sure that Vilchjo got all the data I would need.

Mirinda, Luksa and Nikolao stayed with me as we studied more history of the area. Only some was related to the foolish attempts by man to gather gold. We found a lot more abuse but this was to the slaves or the natives. When the railway was put in then the Chinese were added to this list.

We got copies of good maps and we would go over them with our computers to see what ideas cropped up. We took small assay units and found abandoned cemeteries and house foundations but we were looking for the early native homes.

We talked to the decedents of the original natives. They too were interested in our findings and we shared data. They were just as eager to find out more about their heritage. In fact the campus we were building was going to do research on that very subject.

With the availability of very rapid transit, people of NA had spread out. The pack must have done a bit of extra tinkering because we were now much more social animals, then again growing up with empathy would make it this way too. The end result that cities got smaller but the number of villages grew greatly. We could stand to be alone but not for long.

When our leave was over, the project was done and we were moving to Tennessee.

We stocked up on food and it went into the stasis unit. It was so deep that we had to have a computer take care of inventory. The liver and tripe was gone thanks to the recipes Luksa found and the way she cooked it.

Gold had been found in this area too and there was a lot of damage done in extracting it. The government of a later time did a lot more. Our objective was a lot more encompassing. We were going to basically clean Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, Kentucky and both Carolinas and the Appalachian Mountains.

The job was so large that we would be here a few years and still not do it all. Many people wanted to live here and we were going to give them good farmland. Though roads were not used much any more, we would provide some along with bridges. Many people wanted to go back to the horse and buggy and I was one of them. We wanted to rough it but we had to have our necessities.

We found a lot more cemeteries, foundations, abandoned towns and native villages. Some was found on our own time and some while working. In every case we reported what we found so the archeologists and locals could investigate. In return we got all the information they had for the area in the hopes of finding more data.

The American Civil War interested people all over our country and that meant Tijuana and Toronto too. This was a rich ground and we had to be very careful in what we wanted to do. In one case we had to reroute a river after it was oked by the government of North America that was currently in Omaha. Seven years ago, it was in Guadalajara and in another thirteen it would be in Vancouver. The work was easy but usually tedious. Acting like amateur archaeologists and historians helped a lot.

The details of the war were uploaded and we tried to rectify what the records stated with the evidence we found. People were not very honest some times in what they put to paper.

Thousands of others were working with us through our computers. Again it felt good to help but now we were just people in the vehicle that did all the work.

Kentucky and the other states were just as nice but just as bad. The people wanted to know about battles that were over for 366 years. People are funny even if they are better than they used to be.

September of 2231 was the start of something very important to me and my world.

It all started when one then another of the projectors that produced the forces we used to manipulate rocks and large objects started to become misaligned. We could work without them but that was like cheating. The family was concerned and they came to the site in Kentucky to check on the repairs.

The Pack had given us this system along with five more when we started. Over the last two hundred years, everything but the black hole and the containment vessel had been changed. Sometimes the improvements were inspired by the Pack, but most of the times it was our own. We built the ships from the ground up many times. This did not always mean we controlled remotes. We had to get in there and push, pull and heave much like a cave man.

There is never a shortage of help with our family but most of them were in the way. I tried to hide this fact. The robot repair mechanisms did the majority of the work. The two projectors had to be pulled out and parts made to replace them. While we were at it we had to check the other fourteen units.

I felt shamed because I put the completion of the project behind schedule. Orabela and Juvela came to see me and this made me feel much better. They were finishing up their work and I was still hoping we could make a family someday. Their assignments had not come through and neither had mine from the foreign service.

New parts were flown in and we replaced much of the ship at the space port in Frankfort Kentucky. We were down for three and a half months. Much of the Command vessel was rebuilt to the new specifications. The drones were checked and even they were overhauled. This was not a problem because the work on them would not set us back.

It rained a lot in Kentucky even in the winter months. A shield protected all of us. The constant dark clouds were depressing. The family found reasons to be elsewhere while the crews continued to work on the machines.

My parents came to see me and Mom said, "We are going to China for a while. It's not often that we are all together."

This was odd so I said, "Is it work related?"

Dad smiled and said, "As a matter of fact it is. The Chinese asked us to see what we can do to prevent the silting up of the areas behind the hydroelectric dams. They don't need them but they are a proud people. The job will be at least three years off."

"I hope you have fun."

The parting took a few days to finish and I saw my family off. Orabela and Juvela stayed with me and we shared our love with Mirinda, Luksa and Nikolao.

The command unit was not complete but the new projectors were installed, just not all calibrated. Mirinda, Luksa and Nikolao knew the rest of the job was for the computer's and the remotes and asked to leave and travel to Hawaii. Our family had made a gigantic bridge between the two islands and they wanted to see it. I was happy with this because I had Orabela and Juvela with me.

The three left in a major rainstorm and I curled up with my friends. It was nice to be almost alone like this with each other.

Orabela got a call on her computer and spoke to people at one of the digs she had been working on. She was very excited until she saw me. She started to decline to go and see with her own eyes what her computer was displaying.

I said, "I want you two to go. Mirinda, Luksa and Nikolao will be back soon. These sort of events do not happen often.

The two girls cried because they wanted to stay with me but we both had our work to do. Mine was just to oversee the calibration even if my presence was unnecessary.

Our parting made all three of us very tired. They tried to fill up some imaginary container of love so I would last until we met again.

I worked for three days and suddenly was awoken by Vilchjo. "Michjo, your father wants to talk to you."

From the sound of his voice I hurriedly said, "Hello Dad. What's happened?"

"I'm sorry for waking you but we received an urgent call from the Governor of Georgia. The rain you've been having is even worse in the Appalachian Mountains. A dam and three levees are in danger. The people are laying sandbags but the rain is not slated to stop until Friday. I know the command unit is not finished but this is an emergency. You may not even need the unit other than direct the construction units."

"What do you want me to do, Dad?"

He gave me a verbal synopsis as a heavy download arrived at our computers.

There was little that needed to be done outside of the command unit so I began immediately. I learned what was happening and saw the computer projections. Everything would be all right once I got there. Other units were coming from other locations so I would not be alone in any case.

It felt odd to fly alone but I had done it before. The trip lasted three hours and I began immediately. Two levees were in the most danger and I built them up. The construction drones scooped up a thousand tonnes of water and we flew it to a new canal system that could handle a bit more water. They were going to release the water as fast as they could.

I did this one more time and this significantly lowered the level of the water behind another levee. The dam though was needing me because a surge of water was rushing downstream to the already overloaded dam. I sent construction units to break the force of the water while I tried with the rest of the drones to pick up our capacity or a bit more in water.

I got only three hundred metres in the air when the two un-calibrated projectors started to whine. I just had time for the main computer to tell me, "We are well past out safety margin. I'm—"

Just then the world turned the brightest I had ever seen it.



-------

Chapter 2


I woke up in a lot of pain. When I looked around, I saw that I was not where I was supposed to be. I was laying on my side. The small tractors that we installed in the cabin but never used now held me in position. I was bleeding and I could feel the dampness in my clothing. I must have moved because the darkness called me back.

When I awoke the second time, my mind must have got my healing reflex working but I was weak and still in pain. I could not get free. I tried to access the computer with my mind then my voice but it was not working. There was oddly no response.

"Vilchjo! Would you see if you can deactivate the tractors?"

"Hello Michjo. How are you doing?"

Vilchjo was bright but sometimes, like now, very stupid. "I'm hurt and need to get out of the chair and get to the med unit."

"I will try to get you out but I might be able to get one of the med drones to come here."

"Try both, please."

Vilchjo must have been working but I wondered on the time it took him to get the drone to come near. It acted less intelligent too. I directed its operation through Vilchjo until the pain started to disappear.

Vilchjo said, "Put your hands down to support yourself. I can remove the tractors."

I put my hands down and told Vilchjo I was ready and I promptly fell. The pain was not too bad because of the analgesic. I had to get my clothing off to see the damage and to get treated. When I stripped I found how cold it was. Cold was something I hardly ever felt, except when going to or from a bus and when skiing. At the latter time it was only my face and hands.

My body was bruised and I must have some sort of concussion because I was not thinking right either. The computers on the command vessel must have deemed it dangerous enough that they held me to my chair and used the ejection capsule. This is where I was now. This capsule had a simple computer but I was not able to access it.

When my mind started to work more, I thought of the black hole. There were thirteen different methods of ensuring that it did not get loose. If it did, I would be bathed in energy that would burn me up or just irradiate me. The planet would have about seven years to live before it was completely consumed by the singularity.

The med unit was working diligently and I turned on my side to let it work. It must have been an hour later that I was done and much colder. I had it go over me seven times just to make sure. My own healing power was pushed to do some of the fine details.

I stood on the wall and tried to get my world to stop spinning. I was very cold now and looked around and found some utility clothes. The drawers were stuck from the damage to the pod. There should have been none. I was at least lucky enough to find that I was able to open the drawer for the clothing. It was difficult getting into it but I felt much warmer.

The command unit was very similar to the ones operating on Luna and the two planets. This ship had actually been to Luna but it had to have a booster to get it that far. The tractors and repeller only got us so high. I had to get Vilchjo to interface with the equipment to get the doors to the airlock open.

The wind hit me first. It was cold. The Appalachian Mountains had some snow even in Georgia. When I gazed around, I saw much more snow than I had seen before I crashed. The area around the levees and dam had none. Could the ejection capsule have thrown me to some other area? Why was it so cold?

"Vilchjo, would you be so kind as to find where we are?"

"I have been trying to do that Michjo. I cannot link to any of the satellites. Beampower is nonexistent. I can only find natural occurring radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum and the same is true in the pionic spectrum."

"Your receiver's must be damaged."

"That was my first assumption but there is work going on in the command unit at the present time. This I am able to dtect."

"What is the status of the singularity?"

"There is a danger that the containment vessel will fail."

"Shit. Did you make a distress call?"

"I have and so has the command vessel. We have found no response."

I was frightened for the safety of my fellow humans and surprisingly not very much for myself. "Is there anything we can do to assist in preventing this catastrophe?"

"Nothing at all. There is now a sizable radiation hazzard in the area. The computers and the drones are doing everything possible."

I thought to myself, what could have happened to destroy all long range communications? No rational answer came. Vilchjo cut into my thoughts and said, "We are being observed."

"Where?"

Vilchjo listed the points and the number of people. Why didn't they come and offer assistance? I asked Vilchjo the question and he had no answer either. I had very good eyesight but I could not see them. I looked around and could not see the command unit. Vilchjo gave me the direction and range. I was not up to the hike of fourteen kilometres especially since there was a high ridge between us.

In the end it was too cold and I went back into the pod. It was out of the wind and I knew that it would get much colder before any form of rescue came.

I ate from the emergency rations and drank distilled water while thinking. The food had warmed up automatically and I held the packet to me to get any escaping heat. My core temperature must be rising but it would take a while before I was better. Hypothermia was something I heard of but never from people that had experienced it. Soon I had to put on more of the emergency clothing and wrapped my shirt around my head and ears.

I tried harder to open the drawers because there were blankets and other survival materials. The material of the container was ceramic and it was under a lot of strain right now. No human would be able to get some of those drawers open unaided.

My eye caught what should have been a straight line. It was far from straight now. Ceramic could bend with enough force applied to it but this looked to have been warped. I tapped the material and then the area around the drawers. The second area was damaged by shock while the first seemed to have flowed like hot plastic.

I worked on this for a few minutes but saw no solution to how this happened apart from the obvious crash. When I got no further I thought about what I had seen outside the pod.

Global warming was supposed to make this area warm but it was so cold. Come to think of it, the mountains had a lot more snow on them than I had seen before. Another thing, the ground was not saturated with rainwater. All of this area should be this way.

The pod had its own repair unit and it was busy on the computer. I must have fallen asleep and awoken again. A few hours later, the computer awoke. It knew nothing more than we knew and I directed the device to assist the repair unit in correcting the problems present. I ate another warmed meal just to get the heat inside me.

When I went outside, I saw that it was dark. A wall of trees that I had seen in the distance now reflected light. Again there was nobody around.

"Do we have a drone, Vilchjo?"

"There is a simple one that may monitor this area. It is being worked on presently."

"Anything new from the command vessel?"

"The danger has lessened but only somewhat."

"Is there anything we can do?"

"Possibly. People are investigating the command vessel and there's a danger to them."

"Is the external audio unit functioning?"

"Yes it is but the people do not seem to understand."

I had to think on this and then said, "Are the computers able to get a sample of their speech?"

"Yes Michjo. Oddly the best match is that of the Muskogean language."

"What would a back-to-nature group be doing that they would not do as they were asked?"

"I'm sorry but I have no idea, Michjo."

"I have worked hard here and found that those in this area are in a dialect of the Ahniyvwiya tongue called Tsalagi."

"Cherokee?"

"Apparently that is the case. They are hesitant to come too near our vessel but it is surmised that they will come in time."

"Can the computer express the danger in all of the Tsalagi dialects?"

"This has been done with no success."

If there was some group of Cherokee that reverted all the way to their roots then they might respond to some of their religious myths or perhaps even the Christian or Buddhist myths. Then again, religion was not a good way of dealing with people. If there were Cherokee then there should be the Creeks too though I had not heard of them acting this way when we worked here months ago.

"Tell the computer on the command unit to ask them to come and see me, Vilchjo."

"I will do so, Michjo."

I remembered my camping and searched around in the dark for wood to burn. A while later the drone was ready and it was sent to see the source of the light. I had nothing to light the fire with so I went inside and huddled into all the clothing I could find. I heard that people lived through much worse conditions but I always had the right clothing. Usually beampower was available to heat my clothing, footwear, headwear and handwear.

My thinking was clouded by the cold and running around in the snow with shoes that were so low that snow struck the skin was foolish.

Vilchjo fed the images from our drone directly into my mind as opposed to using the holographic screen he could produce. Some people that obviously looked like Native Americans were now spying on my position while more sat around a fire. In the distance and hidden in the trees was a hide tent sheltering a seven more people while they slept.

I directed the probe to get in close and I saw something strange. It was not that some shaved their heads bald or just left a strip running from the front to the back. They were scarred and — not nice looking. I had to think on this. Genetic modification had not been restricted to plants and animals but humans had employed it too. The Pack's abilities made everyone look at least fairly symmetrical. Some of these people had scars on their faces that were obviously caused by disease and accidents. I gasped when I saw one person talk because their teeth were discoloured and some were missing. I had never met anybody like that in any Pack country. The back to nature groups never went to this extreme.

When I worked in other countries I saw some of what I was seeing now. The pack helped those people at least to get good dental care and medical attention to take care of disease. Though some leadership in some countries did not want this for their people, they could not do much because the Pack would inform the citizens of what their leaders wished to see.

These people not two hundred metres away must be one of those back to nature groups but this did not seem right.

I worked on the problem with Vilchjo for quite a while but we had little data to go on. In the end I had to accept the facts. I had either slipped through the dimensions to some sort of parallel world or I went back in time or possibly both.

Reports came from the command module that the singularity was still in danger of leaving the containment vessel but less so as time went on. This made me less apprehensive than the fact that I may never see my friends and family again. I was a physically strong man but as the import of what happened to me got stronger, I began to weep.

I must have slept again because Vilchjo called, "Michjo, you are required to get up. People are coming near."

I knew that this meeting was important as any explorer coming to the shores of North America. Vilchjo sent the images to my mind and it looked like they were not ready to talk just yet.

The crew and I had met with the natives from my time or world. I knew only a few phrases in Tsalagi, the Cherokee tongue. There were three main dialects. Two had almost disappeared but 'over-the-hill' was the most common.

Vilchjo helped me with more phrases so I could meet these people. There was no way I could function alone so we worked out a workaround. I would send my thoughts where Vilchjo could read them. He would find the best translation and send them back to me so I could vocalise them.

I had to pee and I could not get at the lavatory in the pod because of the damage. I ate and drank quickly before I stepped out into the frozen land I had arrived in.

The airlock was cycled and I walked out with a bare head and bare hands to show I had no weapon, for I had none. A stun pistol was in one of the damaged drawers but I would not want it now anyway.

As I walked around the pod I waved at the Cherokee that were now hiding and I called out to them, "Come, I mean no harm. There is much to talk about." I found a bush and opened three layers of utility clothing to stain the snow yellow. I hoped this natural act would relieve them of some of their anxiety.

I washed my bare hands in the snow and shivered. It was at least ten minutes later that two older males got up and three younger ones stayed behind with bows in their hands. Bows were for hunting and spears and tomahawks were for war usually.

Though the Cherokee were farmers they were still warriors. The information I gathered about them showed that they lived to fight and go into battle. The natives had slaves before the Europeans arrived but it was the Cherokee that treated them like family. Other natives cut off a foot so a slave could not run.

The two men stopped four metres in front of me. They were frightened as indeed I might be in their position. Back in the trees I had seen one man with a musket so I could guess the time period. This had to be from the mid 1600s to the present day in my life. The upper limit was probably around 1850 when they were common. I wanted to lead this if I could so I said, "Welcome to my small home. Would you like something to eat?"

Instead of replying to my question, one person spoke. I recognised some of the words but it was Vilchjo that had to feed me the data to what they said. "Who are you and how did you get here?" My pauses to translate might appear to be a chance to contemplate his words.

"Let us start with names. I am called Michjo."

The two did not like this and I could feel their displeasure. One said, "I am Feather and my brother is Diving Hawk."

I had to speak slow so Vilchjo could ok my phraseology. "I am glad to meet you Feather and Diving Hawk. My people have customs where we are polite to each other and we seldom come to anger. We have not had a war or even a small battle in a great many years. We help those that ask for our help. Our land is very different to what you know."

I knew that this was not something to be proud of for a native. They lived to fight and hunt. The best game were other humans.

I had thought of helping these people and it was easy to think of what they needed besides the obvious healthcare and a proper diet. "The white man comes from a world that has many strange ways. They are very powerful. My people have even greater power but choose to not use it unless there is a great need."

It was hard to lie but I had to do it. I knew enough history of this time period to make some good assumptions. "The white man trades gold coins, brandy, whiskey, cloth, guns or beads for your land. This must already have started. As more white men come they will push the red man further and further away. The red man in the east will be pushed here and they will take your land. The time will come when the white man will set aside land and give this to the red man. When the white man finds riches beneath the land, he will push the red man off to another land.

"Eventually the red man will live in a small area and live on what the white man chooses to give. You must know that the white man's whiskey is liked by many red men. The red men crave this so much that they abandon the ways that fed their families for many years."

"In all this time the white man asks for slaves. The red man attacks a village and carries the captives off to die in the far south. The white man likes this because there are fewer men to stand up to them. Soon they will come to a village and burn it down with all the women and children in it. You could still fight to show that you are men but do not play the white man's game. Your people will lose and so will every red man born."

I got down to the present and said, "I have come from my land through the sky. I wish to give you some of my ideas so you may judge what is right and what is not."

The fear was lessening and I could sense that they believed me. Nothing I said was a lie. The white man had gone through this area for the musket to have been acquired. If the natives had dealings with the white man then the natives were losers. Upon the Cherokee's first meeting with white man, three quarters of the natives died of diseases they had no defence against. Whiskey was one of the white man's greatest weapons.

Diving Hawk spoke now. "How can this thing fly? It has no wings."

"That is true. My people understand the power that pulls us to the land. They then found a way of blocking that. My craft can float like a canoe on the water. When I came here, there was an accident and my great canoe started to break apart. I fled in a small canoe and came here."

"Where is your great canoe?"

I turned and pointed then said, "On the other side of the ridge."

"Did you cause that noise and bright light?"

"I must have. The accident released some power and my canoe fell."

"Can you make your little canoe fly?"

"It was damaged too but in two double hands of days, it should be able to fly again."

The two men backed up and whispered together. The three with the bows did not like what was being said but did not argue overly much.

Diving Hawk came back and said, "Will you come to our village? Others would like to hear your words."

"I will come. My great canoe will take much longer to repair. There are red men there that were asked to come here and talk to me. Will you allow them to talk?"

They were upset now and he said, "No! That is the land of the Creeks."

He was angry and upset so I said, "My words are for all red men."

My jaw was quivering. Diving Hawk said, "Why do you not wear warm clothes?"

"My clothes are in the great canoe. I have very little in the small canoe."

"Then let's hurry to our village."

"Let me get some gifts."

I went back into the pod and took out some packs of ready to eat food. These kind would heat up by themselves in a few minutes and I would love to just hold them. A med unit was a necessity. There was some ceramic tableware that I would not need more than one set of.

I emerged and the doors shut. Diving Hawk and Feather had looked inside while I made my choices. I could feel their consternation. They did not understand anything they saw, especially the chair that was hanging from a wall.

Walking was better as I produced some extra heat. I had to kick myself because I could heal my body and should be able to produce more heat as long I I ate enough.

The snow was not deep but it hit my bare ankles. I tried to ignore the discomfort. It was an hour and a half of running to get to the village. It had a stockade around it. This showed that there were occasional battles. Inside were some seventy smaller structures and one long building of boughs, grass and mud. It was partially submerged into the ground. Women with hair down to the ground as well as children stopped to stare at me. I ignored them and concentrated on the man. Being friendly with another man's wife was bad in this time. Dogs were everywhere and I knew they were used for protection and as pack animals. From the drone's data I assumed the village would hold six hundred people.

The Cherokee culture was very progressive. The women owned the land and the houses. Divorce was as easy as throwing the husband's possessions out the door. The women had an equal voice in most things but were the authority when marriages were worked out. Most marriages were polygamous just like in my time. The men worked in the communal garden at harvesttime. They hunted all the time but mostly in the winter. This was why I saw few adult males.

Diving Hawk spoke rapidly to an older man and it took a minute until I was introduced to Spirit Walker. The man said to me, "Come into my home."

"Thank you Spirit Walker."

There was a small fire going and more wood was put on it. I was given a position near the fire and directed to sit on a deer hide. I had to guess that this was a council house. It began to fill up and I was glad to see the women come in too.

Spirit Walker talked rapidly to the others then said to me, "Tell me about your great canoe that flies through the air."

"I can do that best by saying what I have done in the past with it." Spirit Walker nodded and I began to tell what I had done in other countries. This was not understood so I was loaned another dear hide and I drew a map of the world. The men were incredulous at the scale.

A lie had to be perpetuated and I put in the land of Mu that had sunken beneath the waves many thousands of years ago. Research had shown that most of the red men had come from this land and spread out all up and down the coast of North and South America. The seafaring nations may see this map some day so I drew the country small and made up of many islands.

The map was used to explain where I went. The fact that the command ship and the drones could pick up giant rocks was not believed. Canals were explained until the men got the idea. Rerouting a river they understood too but they did not like this idea at all. I figured it had to do with their religion or possibly I was rivalling their gods with my power. Cleaning waste was understood but they wondered why I did this. The word poison they understood but not the quantities involved.

I switched over to constructing with benasso. A village built then buried they could fathom after a long while since it was similar to the building I was in. Building vertically, they could not see at all. The Cherokee were farmers. They may not have much problems with droughts but they understood the idea.

"When the land is shaped just right, a strong wall is built across a river. Some water is allowed to continue but some is held back. Eventually the water rises to the top of the wall and falls over. When crops need water and there is no rain, this water that was held back, can flow into the fields."

"What if you do not need this water?"

"We have made a lake. Fish are encouraged to live there and have young. The white man makes a great — " The Cherokee may not have seen a wheel yet. "Have you see the wagons used by the white man?"

Spirit Walker said, "I have gone toward the rising sun and found the white man uses a thing to carry himself and what he wants to carry."

"This thing is very important to you. Roads are important too. The part that turns around is called a wheel. A very great wheel that is very wide is put near the wall of water we have made. The water flows over the wheel and makes it turn with great power. You can use that power to grind grain or cut wood into thin strips."

They did not understand so I was loaned still another hide and drew a spillway and a wheel. They did not understand the power of the water until I had one man hold a spear tightly and I used one finger to push it to one side. The man turned though he fought me bitterly.

"My great canoe uses many ideas that will be new to you. To understand these ideas is to study 'science'. This new word is just a way of understanding the world around us. It can be simple like the way a stick seems to bend when put in a stream. It can be very hard in other ways. The way my great canoe floats in the air is one of the greatest and I am willing to share this with you. The ideas are built on many less great ideas so nobody here would understand. Perhaps the children of the children here would know."

Spirit Walker said, "You cannot tell us how your canoe floats on air but tell us how it moves."

"That is also a great mystery."

"Tell us about your gods. They must be great indeed."

This was bad. Religion was a very serious matter to everybody alive at this time. "Our gods helped us like parents. We grew strong and moral. The gods pulled back like an old grandmother and just watch us. If we are helped further then we will not learn. We fumble and fail. When we find a better way of doing something, we feel good because the gods did not show us. Our gods do not wish to be acknowledged. They are content to just watch and smile."

"What is your land like?"

"This will be difficult for you to understand. My great canoe is a tool, the same as your canoes." They seemed to get the idea of a canoe being a tool. "My canoe allows me to go fast and to pick things up. It keeps me warm and I cook my food in it. A tool that does that sort of thing is called a 'machine'. There are many types of machines. They take the power of a man and make him much stronger.

"Some machines make homes for each of us. A small machine makes cloth very quickly. Others carry us to the eastern sea in the time it took me to walk from the gate around your village to here." They were amazed at this but also incredulous.

"We do not trade with each other the way you trade with other red men. I make pictures, sing and play music. People give me whatever food I want. I do not have to sing to be fed because the people are happy to give away what they make. They have a great pride in what they do and we thank each other for what we are given."

"You could take all the food!"

"There is so much food, that I would have no place to put it. We can get anything we want just by asking for it. A long time ago some sick people tried this. They soon saw that there was no need to sit on a mountain of food."

The people usually talked about what I said when I paused but this time a message was relayed to Spirit Walker. "What of your women?"

"We are much the same but also very different."

"How is that?"

"The women of your village are your equals in many ways. They make the meals, take care of the children and work in the fields. The men hunt, fish, make war and help in the harvest when everybody is needed.

"In my land the people are much more equal. Your customs may include the rule that a man may not carry water." I saw that this was true. "Our customs are different. Men and women do all the work whether it is in the fields, in the kitchen or even hunting. Men raise the young but women do more of this. When we vote on important matters, each person's vote is the same as any other.

"We play sports and men are usually stronger. Some sports are played together the way your people play lacrosse with the women. I have played lacrosse for four years. I wrestle but not know the way you do. I also kick a soft thing down the field and the other team tries to take the ball from me but hands are not allowed to be used.

"In my land we have the freedom to do what we want. Most learn from wise men for up to two double hands of years." They did not understand this at all. "My great canoe is difficult to understand and many years have to be spent in thinking."

There were more questions but I was hungry again. I was much warmer but not the way I should be, the fire helped but I think it was my body burning more fuel that did the most good.

I changed the current topic by saying, "I'm not used to the cold you have here and need to eat much more. I have some gifts for some of you. Some are of food. Will you share a meal with me?"

Spirit Walker had to think and said, "I will eat with you."

"My food will surprise you. The containers have a place for a small fire that burns without flames. The food is already cooked but the fire will warm it. My people do not believe in magic. Only people that do not understand what really happens would think this is magic. It is all science."

When they grasped this idea, I handed Spirit Walker a food packet. "Please watch what I do. Do not be frightened by it getting hot." I pealed back a tab and pulled it out of the package and then layed it down. I wanted to hold it to gather the heat but it was better the way I was doing it.

In less than a minute, a seam opened and water vapour escaped. There were a lot of exclamations at this. I handed Spirit Walker a cutlery set and I said, "These are a gift from me to you."

He did not thank me but just watched the water vapour rise. The smell came to me and made my mouth water even though it was not like fresh food. I picked up the hot packet that would usually sit on a table. I used a fork and a spoon to show how they worked. I then used the fork and knife to cut some meat.

Only when I was done did Spirit Walker look ready to try. He had difficulty grasping the tab but the rest was easy. Everybody in the council house watched what happened and then smelt the different aroma that eventually arose. The bottom was very hot but he continued to hold it. He took only a small sample of the food but then had larger portions.

When Spirit Walker was finished, he said, "Your food is strange but good. Tell me how the food gets hot if it is not magic?"

"That is a lesser mystery that will take years to answer. We push the power of the stars into the container. When we pull that one part out, the power will return and give us heat."

"Can you do this again?"

"When my great canoe is repaired I may be able to do that but I have many more important things to do."

"What are they?"

"The first is what I am doing now. I am talking about the dangers facing the red man. The white man is in danger too but there are a lot more of them. I wish to make the red man, the white man, the black man and the yellow man understand each other. We learn from each other.

"I am a medicine man. I can heal many people but not all of them. When your people do not have sickness they will be stronger and better able to learn."

"Show me what you can do."

"I can try but who is now sick that will entrust themselves to me?"

It was the women in the back that did a lot of sudden talking until a child of seven or so came towards me. She had to be accompanied by her mother.

The woman had a firm hold of her daughter. They were both repelled by me. Instead of starting off, I said, "Hello, my name is Michjo. What is your name and that of your child?"

"Fish, my daughter is Smooth Stone."

"Hello, Fish." I turned to the girl and said, "Hello Smooth Stone. I am not going to hurt you at all. I look different than you look but inside I believe I am a good man."

The girl calmed down and I asked, "What is wrong with you, Smooth Stone?"

The girl would not answer but Fish said, "She is dizzy and weak. She runs outside many times a day." I took the last to mean that she had to run behind her home to shit or pee.

"Will the two of you sit down? You are safe. Your whole village is around you."

Fish sat but Smooth Stone had to be pulled down. I pulled out the med unit and interfaced with Vilchjo so it would not float. When I brought the unit close they both pulled away.

"This is a tool only. It will not hurt."

The two fidgeted until some old woman in the back yelled at them. She, I figured, was the boss. I said to Fish, "Would you invite the woman that just asked you to remain still, to come here?"

She did not have to because the woman came down. When she got close, I said, "Hello, I'm Michjo."

"I'm Deer. Why do you want me here?"

"I suspect that you are one of the women leaders of this village. You heard that in my land the women are more equal. I would like to talk to you too."

"What about?"

"Everything but I wanted you here to see and give comfort to Smooth Stone. Please sit."

When the woman sat I handed her the med unit and she inspected it. "What does this do?"

"It does a great many things. I was hurt when my canoe fell from the sky. This device helped heal my cuts and bruises. It will also find sickness. I do not believe that anybody here knows what disease really is. My people know that most disease is actually animals so small that you cannot see without a tool. This device finds the type of animal and like a war leader gets your body to fight the invader the best way. Your body fights and gets better. Sometimes there is no defence and this unit sends in some tiny soldiers to do the fighting for you."

She said nothing but she wanted to hand the unit back to me as quickly as possible. I talked to Smooth Stone and managed to put the unit on her leg. She wanted to pull it away until Deer gave her a firm order to remain still.

The child was obviously upset so I sent some drugs to calm her mind. It took only a few minutes to find that the child was fighting off a multitude of diseases and not doing well. It was crass of me but I had to see if this girl could be cured. If she died which she would normally then I would not be seen as a good doctor. Michjo and I looked at the data and decided to give it a try.

I said to Fish, "Your daughter is fighting more than one kind of sickness. She is fighting much better now. She will be sick for a double hand of days but then get strong again. She will continue to have to run outside."

I turned to Deer and said, "The tiny animals are in all of us. Our body fights them all the time and stays strong. When we go behind the house to squat, many animals come out. In the warm weather, the animals that make one person sick can go to a person that is healthy. That healthy person gets sick and may die. I can tell you what to do so nobody gets sick this way."

"How can we do this?"

"What is inside you is spread all over the land. The small animals have to be picked up by somebody to start to live in a new body. My advice is to dig a long hole in the ground and put wood over it to sit on. What leaves your body falls into the pit. Nobody touches this then."

"What about when it rains?"

"A roof is put over the top so water cannot fall in. If the land around it is made higher, water will not flow across the land and into the pit."

"It's winter and the ground is hard."

"Then make an area a short distance from the village and use that. When it gets warm, the land inside the walls has to be cleaned. A child falls and eventually puts his hand in his mouth. The small animals now try to make a new home and they kill the boy."

The people did not believe me but I could feel less doubt.

I soon treated cuts and bruises but they thought the problems would disappear in minutes. One boy of four finally came with a club foot and his mother She Bear said, "Can your thing help him?"

"I can cure the diseases but this tool is too simple to do this job. The machine in my great canoe could repair his foot in an hour. In four days he could be walking around again and in a few months it will be just like the other boys his age."

"What can you do now?"

I was not a surgeon though with Vilchjo's help I could be. Cutting somebody open even with the help of the med unit was too difficult. I didn't like blood and the thoughts of doing this made me sick.

"I could do this in an emergency but I would wait for my Great canoe to be repaired."

"Would your people come here to do this for me?"

They did not understand about machines. "The machine I am using is doing some work for me. Much of the work on my great canoe is being done by similar machines. My people are healthy and live a long time. Our children do not die of sickness. We have no need for many children because machines do the work for us. When we get old we visit and help our children. Since we do not have large families, we are few in number."

"What are you telling me?"

"Two things. One that we rely on machines to do our work and then that we are few in number."

"But children bring so much love to a family?"

"That is true but a parent has to give much of their time to raising a family. You work most of the day and have little time for each of your children."

"Do you have a machine to plant the crops and then harvest them?" She said this with a small laugh.

"We have many machines. One machine can do the work of a village full of women. It will take years to make the machine but it is worth it."

"What can this machine do?"

I had to go through all the farm machinery I knew of and Vilchjo had to supply me with additional amounts of data.

Deer asked, "Would you make these tools for us."

I had to smile now. "I will help your men make the tools. That way you get to learn how it is done."

"They can do that."

"Ahhh but they will moan and groan at having to learn. They will be angry at me and at you. They will want to go hunting and have to make iron like what the muskets are made from."

Spirit Walker quickly said, "You will show us how to make muskets?"

"I will and I will show you how to make guns that the white man will envy. We will make better canoes, better arrows and better bows. You will not have peace in your village until you make what the women want."

"How long will this take?"

"You can never completely please a woman, Spirit Walker."

"That long?"

"Yes, but it's fun and a challenge."

"I will try this."

A few minutes I had to excuse myself. I went out of the village accompanied by twenty three people as I peed. I had to hunt around with the use of Vilchjo and the drone to find a clump of fairly dry leaves buried under the snow. I had to go badly and took off the three suits of utility uniforms so I could empty my bowels. The leaves were bad but what was worse was being watched by everybody.

I was chattering again by the time I got back to the council house. When I got warmed up again Deer brought me over a beautiful set of buckskin clothing. There were high boots good in the deeper snow. There was a wolf skin to wrap around me and even a pair of fur mitts.

Deer was surprised when I held her hands in mine and is said, "I thank you for this gift. It is beautiful. I would be proud to wear this clothing." I layed it on thick the way we did at home. I studied the garments and complimented all the things that were done so neatly. In return I pushed a self heating meal and another set of cutlery onto her. She tried to give me the same compliments back. She loved what she got especially when she found out how sharp the knife was.

When I sat, the buckskin lay in my lap and the smelly wolf skin was around my shoulders.

I talked myself out before and after a large meal. Feather and Diving Hawk were given another set of cutlery each but I was out of meals. That night I took out my harmonica and showed them the reeds. This got me into physics as I used a gut string to make notes.

I then sat and played my heart out with ten songs. My audience was very appreciative of my work and I felt that I was being accepted.

They did not bring out their rattles, drums, whistles and flutes. When I had heard these types of instruments uptime, I thought them odd simply because they used a different frequency for their notes.

Many people were talking and soon Deer came to me and said, "Leaping Fawn wishes to give you a place to sleep if you wish it."

I was instantly alert but not from the usual attack. The family structure of the Cherokee was strong. I did not know all the social details so I said in a low voice, "I am not looking for a wife and I do not want to disappoint Leaping Fawn."

Deer looked at me then said, "She only wishes to know you better."

"Then I wish to learn more about her and your tribe. A wife and a family at this time would hurt me."

"Why is that?"

"A child has to be cherished. If I am teaching and making tools I will not have the time for family."

She seemed to understand so I continued, "My father had three wives and I had four brothers and sisters. Our parents were very good to us. I learned respect and honour from my father. When the time comes, I will try to teach this to my own children."

"I think you would make a good father."

"Thank you, Deer. Would you show me Leaping Fawn?"

Leaping Fawn was twenty five I learned and looked older. She had a nine year-old son called Feather Down. This was his soft name before he got another by the male members of the tribe. Wind was a daughter of eight and Rabbit was six.

The house we went to had one room. It left unsaid that the children would see and hear us. In some non pack countries this sort of action was frowned on.

I was formally introduced to the children and I spent some time with each to let them know that they were special. They seemed bright but still very cautious of a stranger in the house.

When the children got into bed, Leaping Fawn said, "Tell me about the women of your world?" It was now dark and the only light came from the small fire in the middle of the room. Most of the smoke left by the hole in the roof the same way it had in the council house.

I could feel her sexual excitement but it was not very high. "We have many customs that your people would not be aware of."

"What customs?"

"A man and a woman kiss. This gives the man something to do while the woman has a chance to get excited."

"What is a kiss?"

"That is when two people hold each other and place their lips together. Would you like to show you?"

She just nodded as if this was her due. When I held her she was stiff and got stiffer. I whispered, "I will not hurt you or force you to do anything. That is a serious crime in my land."

She relaxed and I moved to kissing other areas of her face, ears and neck. Leaping Fawn was getting excited now and started to take off her clothes. "Hurry up."

I had to take off three sets of coveralls before I got into the bed. This was a bit of a cultural shock because I used my lips much more. People without a shower or even soap tended to smell a lot more. They thought nothing of it. This did not denigrate the natives because very few people of this time washed.

Once under the warm furs I started again until she urged me to mount her but I had other ideas. My fingers found her warm opening. I massaged her clit every once in a while as my fingers slid into her opening. I monitored her reaction and did what I could to make this time good for her.

She had a small orgasm finally and now I moved into position. Keeping myself from releasing was something I learned in my early years. Leaping Fawn was very appreciative of this because she had a chance to have another orgasm. I kept moving because she kept reacting to my thrusts.

When she started to calm down I slowed down too. She finally said, "You know how to use that cock of yours." She was a little crude but that was ok.

"I can show you some more if you want."

"You did not release and you ask if I want more?"

"Most of my partners like many — of those fun times."

"I'd like a few more too."

"As long as you don't get sore."

After the next orgasm, I had her get on her knees. This was new to her but she still liked it. Next I lay on my back with my clothes over my chest as Leaping Fawn bounced up and down on me. She had to do this twice because of all the tweaking I did to her nipples and her clit. I unloaded into her twice but mainly I was thinking of Orabela and Juvela and what might happen to them now.

Leaping Fawn finally went to sleep with me still erect inside of her. I think she slept contented or at least until I had to get her to sleep on her side.

The next morning, Leaping Fawn awoke first and started breakfast. I got up later and put on my new clothing. The children were all dressed and stared at me and my equipment in the dim firelight. They liked my tattoo.

Rabbit asked, "What's that," as she pointed to my torso?

"A person that is able to draw pictures uses a tool that puts ink into the skin of my chest."

"It looks alive."

"It is just a drawing."

"What's a drawing?"

I was getting too ahead of myself. When I turned to Leaping Fawn, I said, "May I draw a picture on her clothing with the black at the end of a stick?"

"You can if you wish."

I found a cool stick with a burnt end and tried to get Rabbit to come close. Leaping Fawn said, "He will not hurt you."

Rabbit came close and I drew a picture of her face on the hide. By noon most of the soot would have come off. While Rabbit and the rest admired my work, I beckoned Wind to come and I did something similar for her. Feather Down was named after the soft feathers close to the body of a bird. I drew him sitting on a toboggan as he slid down a hill. He tried to act unconcerned but I knew he liked it.

As we ate, I said, "When I was your age, Feather Down, I went to a special village where people my own age met and learned. Part of the day our elders taught us how to play music or to sing. Another elder taught us how to draw pictures. Still others taught me how to make pots out of clay or to shape the clay into the form of somebody's head."

"Those things are not important."

Leaping Fawn was a little shocked but I hurriedly said, "When you are trying to survive, you are right. When you are safe, music and art are important."

"Why?"

"When the first white men came they brought disease." I held up two hands with some fingers curled. "Three in four of the Cherokee died. If you knew how to fight disease then those people would have lived. Disease is your biggest enemy and you sit back and let it win without even trying to fight it."

"I am not weak. When I get bigger, I will go to the Creeks and kill a man."

"You may well try that but you let another enemy kill your people and you don't fight back."

"I can fight."

"I know you can but can you change so that you can fight disease and the Creeks?"

"I can kill," he said belligerently.

"You will make a good warrior some day but I have to show you how to fight an enemy that killed more people than the trees in the forest."

"How?"

"By building a house that is warm. By shitting in a hole and not on the ground. And by washing the old dirt from your hands."

"I'm clean."

"None of us are clean." I had to stop because I had no way to prove my point. In fact I had to prove this to the whole village. They may act like the white man and ignore the facts but perhaps I could shock them into doing something about it.

After the meal, I thanked Leaping Fawn for giving me some of her meagre supplies of food. I then went outside the stockade and did my business. I wanted a shower so bad, I could taste it.

"Hello Vilchjo."

"Hello Michjo."

"Would you tell me the status of the repairs to the command unit and the pod?"

"Progress on the containment vessel is being made but the danger has not passed. We will not know for sure for at least twenty hours. If we are successful then it will take a year to be in operational readiness. I can give more details if you wish."

"Why so long?"

"We have to build up the infrastructure first. Three of the computers were destroyed though parts could be salvaged. They have to be replaced. One of those was the one dedicated to the protection of the containment vessel.

All of the tractors and the repellers need to be replaced. We have lost all of our major drones."

"Do you know what happened?"

"That problem is still being worked on. Part of it, we think, has to do with the two un-calibrated repellers. We know that there was a strong surge of pionic energy but we have no idea where it came from or what it actually did. We surmise that something akin to a dimensional trap was opened near the singularity."

"We were told that was not possible."

"The Pack should be informed."

"The Pack, our friends and our family may no longer be alive or they may not be alive in our world."

Vilchjo said nothing further and neither did it. It was too depressing. A moment later he said, "The ejection pod will be livable in fifty six hours. The antigrav unit was damaged. The two tractor and two repellers suffered even more damage than they should have. We suspect that these two devices are the key to what happened."

I was a realist enough to see that this time was now mine. To bring about the world that I had come from a great many tasks had to be accomplished. Starting on the planning was difficult because many people still wanted to ask questions. I didn't mind answering but I would have to do so for each and every person in the village.

I found Spirit Walker and said, "Good morning Spirit Walker."

"You talk a great deal."

"That is true. The red man likes to sit and think. I like to do this too."

"It sounds like you want to change our ways."

"Yes but I will trade for your help."

"What do you mean?"

"I will make much more accurate guns." I looked around and said, "If a deer came out of the trees on the top of that ridge, you could shoot it from here."

"That's impossible."

"Not at all. My people have sportsmen that can hit a target like that half as much again."

"Give me one to try."

"My canoe is being repaired. When it's done, I will make one and we can talk."

In a change of topic, he asked, "We are going hunting. Will you come?"

This was a test so I asked, "How long will you be hunting?"

"Until we get some deer or moose."

"What do your hunters take with them? I have never hunted before."

He looked at me oddly and then he told me what the hunter took with him. I had very little of these supplies and told him so.

He said, "I have what you will need."

"Then I will be happy to go with you." Vilchjo and I went through all the details about the sport of hunting from my time. It began with hunting mastodon by short men with a lot of hair to clips about what some people of my time did. They had to do it the difficult way in some situations and used a bow. Others used a high power rifle powered by compressed air.

The hunters had to make as little noise as possible, come on the animals so they would not catch the scent of us and there was a lot to be caught. The hunters wore camouflage. The ones that took the easier route waited for the prey to come to them and the real hunters went out and stalked the game.

The natives used dogs to flush the game and to do the tracking. They also protected the village, carried the native's goods but also contributed to the shit in the village.

It suddenly occurred to me that this sort of bonding exercise may have me kill some animal. I had never done this before or at least intentionally. Animals had died when we cleaned our planet but even those we tried to frighten away first.

I had eaten at the home of Leaping Fawn. She had no husband to help her get animal protein. She had to rely on charity or perhaps trade with other tribal members. I was obliged to pay my own way in this world and that meant that I had to kill animals. The village or someone in it had fed me too so I owed them some of my labour too.

If I used a bow, I would probably hit my own foot. It took skill and practice to hit what a person aimed for. "Hello Vilchjo."

"Hello Michjo. How are you today? You look somewhat like a native."

"I feel much better today. My body burns much more food for heat but I will still get wet in these clothes."

"There is a suit in the pod that will keep you dry."

"The one for vacuum work?"

"Yes."

"Too clumsy and the soles of the boots will wear out even with moccasins over the top. A hat would be good as well as better protection for my hands. The utility uniform does not allow me to void myself without freezing."

Vilchjo said, "It is possible to shift the repair unit to alter one of the uniforms to suit you. The blankets can be freed."

"I like that idea. How long would it take?"

"At least a few hours."

"I am going hunting with Spirit Walker."

"That sounds like something you would not willingly do."

"I have to support myself here. It's like in the non Pack countries. I would supply food from the command unit but the village wants meat. Killing is necessary when birth control is not available. My own personal feelings have very little to do with reality."

"How are you to kill an animal?"

"That was the reason for calling you again. There is a stun gun, a cutter/welder and a signal gun."

"A rifle would be far more efficient."

"I have none though. I'm worried about hypothermia even with my body's ability to produce heat. My extremities may freeze. I don't know how the natives function. It's so cold."

"They must have additional insulation that you do not see. Information that came from other sources, suggest that moss could be used to insulate. My records of the natives of the far north used two layers of fur."

"They lived where it was very cold."

"You are too soft when viewed from present company. I have been monitoring them and they see you as effeminate."

"I saw that too. I considered having you speak to them or show a video. They would be amazed but only for what I had. I need to prove myself to them so I can lead them away from their old destiny."

"You have to appear to be a mighty hunter. You talk too much while the natives think more even though it takes them much longer to come to an obvious solution."

"A teacher has to talk."

"True but the natives are not used to being taught. You might do better to just show by example. They will come to you then to learn."

I had to think on this. Civilisation in the eyes of the white man was the ability to stand up to a present day aggressor. It also had to do with the domestication of plants and animals. This lead from hunter-gatherers to farmers. Farming allowed population centres to increase in size. This increase allowed artefacts to be produced by craftsmen, institutions came into being, then both standing and militia armies. Slavery and the class system came into being. The natives were civilised up to a point and the white man had to point to slavery as one of the pillars.

While waiting, I went back to Leaping Fawn's home and gathered my uniforms and tied them together in a small bundle. The med unit was hung around my neck with the computer. My slippers were already on my feet and inside my moccasins. My only other possessions were two sets of cutlery. One I needed for me but Leaping Fawn would get the last set.

I inspected the village and tried to see the good and the bad points. It was difficult to ignore people that I walked by. In my society, we always greeted each other even if it was a nod of the head or a smile.

My observations suggested that a septic system would do wonders. Better homes lead to granaries. Streets lead to wheels and wagons. A city had services like garbage collection and public maintenance. All this lead to better transportation. In this time it was with horses for motivation. The animals were not in the village but some must be available.

It was easy to see that the natives would not want to go to the trouble to make wheels because there were no roads, only narrow paths. They did not trade that widely so they did not need to carry heavy loads. Unlike the white man, they fit well within nature so they did not need complex tools.

I needed to take a step backward in human evolution by encouraging greed. This desire for materialism would get them motivated but at some point they had to be turned outward to help mankind instead of their own internal needs. This process took a short time in the future but NA was fairly civilised then. With the needed infrastructure missing, this process may take longer then I had to live.

I found Rabbit playing with some girls and I asked her, "Hello Rabbit. You look very happy playing with your friends."

"We are working."

I could not see this as work but let her keep her delusions. "Would you please tell me where your mother is?"

She moved to one side and pointed towards a home. "Thank you very much Rabbit."

She just turned around and went back to her friends. Children were odd at the best of times.

I met Leaping Fawn and thanked her again for giving me a place to sleep. I could actually see her blush. Other women were near and I had to assume that she was giving a detailed description of our lovemaking.

With two hands I handed her the set of utensils and said, "I wish to give you these. They are the last set I have to give."

She took them and said, "Why do you give me these? I did nothing."

"You gave me shelter and food. Perhaps I can try to hunt."

"You have not hunted before? Your land is strange."

"Yes it is. Children grow to adults and do not die as babies. Pain and sudden death are uncommon. It is a kinder land."

"If you are going hunting, you need a bag."

"I would be proud to use your bag if you loan it to me."

"It will be a gift."

We went to her home to get the bag but Leaping Fawn had ideas. I was on my back and she was riding me within minutes of entering. A considerable time later, she gave me an exhausted smile and said, "A hunter does not do this before a hunt. He needs his strength."

"I am not much of a hunter."

"Be careful and come back. I will always have a warm bed for you."

"I would be happy to share your bed and your body."

When I found Spirit Walker, he was miffed. Possibly because I had made love before hunting or perhaps it was another reason. I was given some leather thongs, a second pair of moccasins, a large hide and a larger one that had to be used as a tent. These were rolled up and I had to tie them to me the way the others were. At least I did not have a bow to carry.

A small religious ceremony was performed before we left the village with a seven dogs. When we left it was at a jog. This may be to show me up but to also get to where we were going to hunt as soon as possible. I was strong and in good shape but I was not like the natives. I had to use the med unit to help me purge toxins from my blood. I did not have to worry about being cold.

When we stopped, the rest were not breathing as hard as I was. I seemed to feel some respect. It possibly came from being able to keep up. I was glad that Spirit Walker was with us because he was considerably older than the rest.

The group broke up. One hunter lead most of us south for fifteen minutes. He placed me first and said, "Walk toward the Spirit Mountain."

He did not explain any more but I got the idea. I was going to be a beater and flush the game toward the other hunters. The rest hurried off and I began walking through the sometimes deep snow with the dogs now staying with these men. It was hard work. The buckskin started to get damp so I waited until I found a clearing. I voided myself and put on my utility uniform then the buckskin. The inner layer was strong and would keep me warmer and considerably dryer because my sweat was able to leave.

The drone was far overhead and I used it to find the rest of the group. When I searched the area, I saw nothing but plants, rocks and snow. The drone went for a search and Vilchjo would inform me if any game was found.

I arrived with the others and found only a few rabbits. Some of these were caught by snares I saw.

Along the way Vilchjo had informed me of the presence of a small herd of deer further toward Spirit Mountain. Quick Fox was the man that placed us and I said, "There are seven deer toward Spirit mountain." I pointed toward them and added, "They are in a small valley with a lot of tall trees." I did not know the word for conifer trees.

"How do you know?"

The Cherokee had to gradually learn about what I had so I said, "One of my machines flies over the animals. My people rely on machines much more."

I felt his fear raise considerably and he hurried away to confer with Spirit Walker and some of the others. Spirit Walker and the rest came to me and asked, "How do you know that the deer are toward Spirit Mountain. Did a spirit tell you?"

"My people do not believe in spirits. I mentioned last night that our gods sit back and watch us without interfering."

I had to explain about communications on one of the Pionic bands. "If you wanted to warn your village of an attack, you might make a fire on a high mountain. In the day you may use a blanket to start and stop the smoke until your village sees this. You could use very large drums or a whistle.

"My machines send me the news in a way that only my people can hear. This is like the way dogs can hear better than men. There is nothing of spirits in our science. There are only facts. If you drop a rock, it will fall. Water goes downhill not up and some men talk a lot."

It took a moment for Spirit Walker to relax but he did not do so completely. He said "Show me."

Instead of leading, I got a branch and drew a map in the snow. Maps were new to them but they had understood after a fashion. The snow was not good so I used pieces of twigs to mark areas and positions. I relayed the image of one particular rock. This seemed to get the men to understand much better.

This time the other group hurried off and we waited for most of an hour. I was cold and had to move around to keep warm. Spirit Walker and his men were in position but I kept this information back so they had a chance to work this operation out for themselves.

Quick Fox sent us out. I was the last man and toward the west. With more information from Vilchjo, I shifted much more west and used two sticks to hit against each other. The deer were moving westward when we wanted them to go north.

They soon heard the noise I made and stopped. It took a while but they continued west. I now had to race as fast as I could to head them off. It took fifteen minutes of racing through deep snow to get ahead of the animals and make them turn east. By the time they got back to where they had been, they heard the rest of us and the dogs baying. This time they raced north as we wanted.

I wanted to rest because I was so tired but I could not do so. I was a team player and had to stay with the team or appear weak.

Vilchjo gave me pointers on the easiest route. It was good because I could hardly stand. I had played soccer and lacrosse and ran all the time. Here I had to push through snow and carry a pouch and coiled hides on my back.

It was immoral to increase our ATP in our bodies if we were going to compete in a sport but here was different. I had Vilchjo adjust the med unit to give me more endurance by increasing the adenosine triphosphate in my body. This would not happen right away but in a few hours I could exert my muscles more.

When I got to the scene of the slaughter I almost puked. I was not opposed to eating meat but here I saw the animals slaughtered. What was even worse was the men eating the still warm organs raw. The dogs had a feast.

This was very difficult for me but I went forward with my table knife and worked on a carcass after I saw what was happening. My knife was much sharper than the stone or one obsidian knife I saw.

I was not very quick at what I was doing and instead of thinking on what was happening, I concentrated on the mechanics of cleaning the animal.

Spirit Walker came to me with a smile and fresh blood on his lips. He said, "You did very well — Hawk Eye."

"Thanks Spirit Walker but you did the shooting."

"Quick Fox said that the deer tried to escape and you left to bring them back."

"That's true, but how do you know. Do you have a machine flying overhead?"

It took a while for him to see this as a joke and he slapped my back and almost knocked me off my feet. "We watched you and saw the tracks the deer made. Would they have got away?"

"I can only guess, but it's possible."

He smiled and handed me a bloody portion of an organ in a very bloody hand and said, "Eat! You share our kill."

Somehow I avoided gagging. "I will share with you but our customs are different. We cook our meat. Our wise men say that to eat raw meat is a crime against the deer."

Spirit Walker looked shocked. "That's foolish. This is good."

"Are the white man's ways always good or always bad? Our people eat very little meat. It is just that our ways are different. You are not wrong in what you think and neither am I. Our ideas are just different."

Spirit Walker took a bite of whatever he had in his hand and put on a show as to how good it was. "This is good."

"Yes it is but it is not for me."

It took a few more minutes to get over this rough spot. From the feelings I got from Spirit Walker, I had just wiped away all the gains I got in finding the deer in the first place.

The deer were cleaned and any glands were removed. Since there were five deer killed, some men went back to the village instead of continuing with us. The men had to shoulder their burdens when a toboggan or a sled would have made the trip a lot easier. Even skis would help. Some of our group had snowshoes but only three.

We found one more deer later that day but cleaned the animal and made camp instead. I was given a share of the meat but somehow my position had soured.

It was hard to get to sleep in the cold but somehow I managed it. I was awoken later by Quick Fox. "Your turn to stay awake." I soon learned that this meant that I had to keep watch.

I had heard of the military necessity of this but only now did I see how difficult it was. I gathered additional wood and walked around the camp while covered with the majority of my furs.

I kept the fire going but only stayed close enough to get warm and then feed the small blaze. Later that night, wolves came near and the dogs put them to flight. My drone showed that the wolves had not gone far.

As I walked my rounds, I studied the landscape for threats. I pushed the drone to head for the command ship. An hour later I found it but there were perhaps a thousand natives within half of a kilometre.

This surprised me so much I asked Vilchjo about this.

"The computers send electrical shocks to everybody that gets close. Some of the assay drones carry a low power laser. They shoot holes in clothing or people but at low power. So far nobody has been seriously hurt."

"What about the pod?"

"The same thing is happening."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"The situation was well in hand."

"What happens if they attack in mass? These people see this as a game and will risk their lives for nothing."

"The command vessel has been ruptured in four places but now there is a shield over each area. They cannot enter. They can throw rocks or set fire to trees laying on the hull but it will do no damage to the ship."

"What about the pod?"

"There are no openings now. A fire will do nothing. They may roll the pod away or even carry it but in twenty days and two hours it will fly away from where it is."

"How was I going to get the supplies today?"

"An assay drone from the command vessel will bring what you need."

"What's ready now?"

"We thought insulated clothing that would touch the skin and a fabric similar to the blankets for the outer layer. A conso seam joins the upper to the lower units. A similar arrangement is used to attach the hood and each of the stockings. Since you were exerting yourself today, there is provision for cooling."

"Bring them now! I do not like being kept uninformed. You have enough intelligence to know that this was a major event. Those people could go to the village I was at and kill everyone. They are not sane."

Vilchjo said, "I believe you are correct but the computers on the command unit are acting oddly."

I was very worried, "How oddly?"

"There is nothing major, just some of the decisions that are made should have been made by a human. That is the way we are made. I believe the Pack saw a problem eventually and sought to avoid it by some very precise programming that is burnt into the crystal and not subject to being modified."

"I never knew this?"

"It was mentioned many times on broadcasts but usually there was so much other data that this point was largely ignored."

"Why did they do that?"

"These were not Pack representatives. There are so many checks and balances that this situation would never come up. We now have no oversight and the computers are working very hard to save the planet and the command unit."

"Should I go there?"

"I believe you should but the situation is not bad and may never get that way. Flying the pod back to the ship may be enough to set the computers straight."

"Put me through to Harpo."

I connected to the entity that controlled the other computers. It said, "Hello Michjo, how are you today?"

"I'm cold and uncomfortable, Harpo. How are the repairs coming?"

"There are many issues connected to the containment vessel. Sporadic radiation in the electromagnetic and pionic spectrums still occur. There is now only a 7.3% chance of the Earth being consumed. A statistical analysis shows that this figure should drop to near zero in another 43 hours."

"What is the chances of the natives gaining access to the command vessel or the pod?"

"The pod is in the most danger but the figure is near zero. They have tried to move it but it is stuck in the frozen ground. We estimate that tomorrow they will try to dig the pod out. With no interference from us this would take the better part of a day. With electrical shocks and bursts of laser energy, they will not proceed.

"We had located those in charge and it is they that will push their minions to move the pod. It is well within our programming to protect ourselves like this."

"When was this programming put in?"

"From the very first Pack computer. The great Nicolas wanted to make sure that non Pack countries did not gain the use of Pack computers."

"What tribes are near the ships?"

"There is a large band of Creeks near the command vessel and an almost equal number of Chickasaw around the pod. Their languages are similar and their dialects have not differed enough to make each group mutually undecipherable.

"A large number of Cherokee are coming from four different tribes. They had an uneasy peace with the Creeks but they always fight the Chickasaw. All three tribes are allied with the British.

"We expect a fight and this is one of the reasons you were not bothered."

"Bothered! Your programming specifically excludes you from taking or allowing a life to be lost."

"Michjo, you misunderstand. We have crashed on a non Pack planet with only one Pack member here. There is a great danger to the planet, from our technology and this vessel. Protocol Delta-12 had to be instituted. This brought on many more protocols. They were put their by Nicolas himself. The Pack seeks to save lives but history shows that they killed many to preserve the freedom of the rest.

"Our efforts are to still protect mankind but we now have to protect mankind from itself."

I talked more with Harpo. I now understood the reason for his slightly odd behaviour as reported by Vilchjo. I was also surprised with myself. I had demanded answers from Michjo and Harpo. I used far less manners than I ever had before. The process of questioning had gone much faster and been more thorough but I felt sick inside as if I was beating a friend.

It was a given that the Cherokee would come to the village I was in and within three to five days. I was just surprised that the Creeks were not already in the view when I had used the drone to survey the area. Forty kilometres even in snow and over a high ridge could be managed by natives as strong as those I now guarded.

By the time daylight started to nip away at the dark, I had the beginnings of a plan.

Vilchjo informed me of the arrival of my camping equipment. This had been among my possessions on the command unit. My pack looked very welcome as it was slowly lowered to my feet. I looked in the upper pack and I felt the best I had in a long time. With bit of searching I found that it contained my hiking boots, tent, self inflating air mattress, a bedroll, pots and pans, a small heater suitable for cooking a meal or boiling water and some emergency meals almost made me want to cry in a way because they reminded me of what my old life was like.

The pack should fit my back perfectly and the weight would be born on my hips. There was a cheat mechanism at the top where a small gravcoil could take any or all of the weight. This had been used along with the assay drone to bring it here. All of the equipment was ultra light.

Many people camped but wanted to take some necessities with them. To use this lifting device in my time would mark me as a wimp. We had our time in this life and we had to experience it. The sad fact was that I was the only Pack citizen here. There would be nobody else to carry on if I failed.

All the fabrics were light and compressed into a small volume. Once I found a blanket, I spread it out and quickly took everything from the pack. The blankest would blow away in the smallest wind.

I found my all weather suit in its small tube. This was said to be one of the best available at my time. My folding knife was there but also another from the other survival pod. A small bundle, Vilchjo told me were Nikolao's shirts. They were very ornate. They had long sleeves and useful in cooler climates. They would also make good gifts since I knew that Nikolao would not be getting them back.

There was the survival laser tool used to cut trees along with a power cell. The stun weapon was also here. Next to come out was my own camping tools. They were used to cut wood, dig a hole, and one made my eyes water. It was a device the vibrated the air and ejected a fine mist of water and some cleanser that removed dirt and old perspiration from a person. This was also used to clean a dirty butt.

Besides the shirts, there were a dozen small boxes. I did not know what they were and had to ask. Vilchjo said, "People of this time also struck steel against flint. The hot sparks could ignite material if it were adequately prepared. The natives in the village do not have this device but some of the Europeans should.

There was another small tube. "What is this, Vilchjo?"

"Harpo had made an assessment of the situation. I see now that it was flavoured with the new programming that has come into force. He made a suit for you as you had asked but he made his own improvements. First of all, it is very bright white. This will play on the religion of the tribes."

I was disappointed and hurt by this. People should listen to my words and make an informed decision as to how to proceed. Vilchjo didn't speak as I thought about this eventually. I realised my morals had already begun to bend with the first lie I had said.

I put everything back into the pack. It was full but it would expand on need to put much more into it. I kept the laser, and the stun weapon with me as well as the hat that kept my ears warm.

When the camp began to awaken, they found venison being already cooked on the fire the way they had done it last night.

Spirit Walker just looked around then at me and went into the trees to perform his morning ablutions. I figured he was wondering if I slept on watch then I remembered the hat I was wearing.

There was only a little talking in the camp but this was usual. When it came time to break camp, I brought out the pack and retrieved my suit. There were a lot of spectators now and they got a chance to see my tattoo. I had to quickly strip down then dress again in the cold clothing but it warmed quickly. I had used this garment for not only hiking but to observe wildlife. To do this with a good chance of getting close, the suit would act like a chameleon and blend into the environment.

My buckskin went into the pack and I now wore thin gloves so my stunner sat exposed on my finger. When I was ready, I packed everything including the tent and hide I had slept in for a part of the night.

I took a step to get into position without saying a word. Spirit Walker said, "What is this you are wearing?"

"The suit I usually use when I walk among the trees."

"Your pack is odd?"

"Yes it is. It is from my land."

"How did you get it?"

"A machine fetched it for me."

He just looked at me and I looked at him. This felt wrong but only wrong from the point of view of my customs not the here and now.

I remained quiet and contemplative and finally Spirit Walker chose to walk off to continue the hunt. This time I kept up much better because of the footwear and my burden being better distributed.

I thought about warning Spirit Walker about what was happening but it was better if he had less time to think about it.

The drone gave me information and I passed it onto Spirit Walker. We found a bull moose and the men were able to take it fairly easily. When the organs were given out, I was mentally prepared.

I used a small force generator to cut some dead branches. It worked by making two shields of force and then shifting them enough that they broke the molecular bonds. There was a keypad to keep it from working in unauthorised hands and also to give the kind of action the user wished. It could act like a sheer that simply cut but it could also be used like a saw to cut boards. There was even a drilling function. For me, it was easier because I could use my mental interface to Vilchjo so I could control the tool.

Quick Fox was staring in wonder at what I was doing and I said, "It's a tool much like a knife. Like any tool, it cannot do everything but it can cut wood easily. There are two small lumps that have to be pushed to make it work and one more to make it cut." I took my hand out of the device but kept it away from Quick Fox as I pointed out the three buttons and pushed them one at a time. I then spoke of everything I did and why I did it. I didn't want branches suddenly falling or worse, springing up into somebody's face.

To make the tool less threatening, I went around to each man and showed them how it worked. As I went on I was able to get closer to them without frightening them.

Spirit Walker was afraid but not as much as the rest. I said, "The device is simple to operate but like a knife, it can be dangerous. Responsible children of my people use this tool. I have much to show your people about my own. Would you like to try this? To make it stop all you have to do is release at least one of the lumps."

The device was just a ceramic handle. The first two buttons armed the device and the third performed the sheering action. The other buttons were simply not explained yet.

I could cut down a tree that was a metre in diameter if I chose but it would not go any bigger. The saw function could do the same thing and made some waste as the two fields rotated against each other. I could make long boards to carry the meat.

My hand was extended with the device in it. It was a half of a minute before his hand came out. He was much more frightened now but he was in front of his people and had to accept the challenge.

Once he had it in his hand he pushed the buttons I had pointed out and the sheering force was activated but it cut nothing but air. It was a few long minutes later that he tried to hand it back to me.

I said, "You can talk to a young warrior about fighting an enemy but he will not truly learn until he faces a man." I held out a long branch in front of him and again he was forced to use the tool. After the first cut, I moved the branch so he could take a second cut. One final cut was used to sever the last piece.

Spirit Walker had a small smile on his face hidden in a passive face. I simply pointed out more wood that needed to be cut. He looked at me a while then finally walked over to do this work.

While Spirit Walker cut branches, I took a piece of branch I had cut and used my folding knife to cut thin strips from it. I had done this sort of thing before but it was used to carve a figurine to give to a child of a family we met on the trail.

The shavings got thicker as I cut more and finally I was cutting up small branches. A fire had not been started because the men were clustered around Spirit Walker as he cut everything he could.

I used the flint and steel but the fire did not start. Vilchjo said, "The shavings are still too damp and too thick. My records show that a pinch of dry moss was used."

"Where can I get some."

"You can only get some moss from under the snow and dry it over a fire made by somebody else, unless you want to use the laser."

"I think I'll just let somebody else start the fire."

While waiting I picked up a branch about thirty five centimetres in diameter and visualised an eagle I had seen with a fish in its talons as it climbed for altitude. Carving was not my speciality but I was ok at it.

I could save time by using the saw function but I was not going to get the device back for a long time. I could feel the men now wanting to try the device but Spirit Walker did not want to give it up until he knew all its secrets.

The knife I used was not passive. The edge was a force field. It was intended for general use not artistic pursuits but it would work. I had the bird roughed out by the time Spirit Walker started to teach what he knew about the device. A half hour later he had to give it up but now he stayed to guide.

The moose was getting cold by the time Spirit Walker left the group. He looked at me without talking and came over to see what I was doing. "What do you make?"

"Something to sit in the council house."

He looked at the chips and said, "You did not make a fire."

"I do not know everything and I have to be taught. Will you show me?"

He looked at me a while then took some tools from his pouch. A small blackened board was used to support a cylindrical tool. A bit of moss was put close to where the tool would turn so it would rub on the board. The cylinder I saw was rotated quickly in one direction then in another. It took a few minutes before it started to give off a bit of smoke.

Spirit Walker said, "Blow on it gently."

I bent over and blew a little. The smoke grew until I saw a small red lump. I continued what I was doing as Spirit Walker stopped and gathered another pinch of moss and put it on the coal. "Blow a bit harder."

I did as asked and Spirit Walker fiddled with the way the moss was layed. He used some of my finer shavings to cover the back of the pile of moss and I blew a bit harder until a flame appeared. I stopped but stayed close.

Spirit Walker fed the fire with the care of an expert. When it was safe to do so, he moved the small board over to my tinder and he took over the caring of the fire.

Spirit Walker got the fire going well but called for fuel. By now trees were cut and we had a great pile of wood to use.

I asked, "Will you show me how to finish butchering the moose?"

"They did not teach you this either?"

"I do not hunt to kill. Sometimes I get close to animals so I may observe their habits."

Without verbally answering, he got up and began to butcher the animal. I used my cutlery knife when it came my turn to part the hide from the flesh. The other knife was too sharp but better for cutting the portions into sizes suitable for carrying.

After showing Spirit Walker what I was doing I handed him the knife and said, "There is no knife sharper. Pinch the two lumps together to make it this way or do not push them and its like my other knife.

He was less hesitant to use this but after a few cuts I could feel his satisfaction at the way the tool worked. The meat was pushed aside and we had to keep it away from the dogs.

Spirit Walker reluctantly handed the knife back to me and I could feel that he would like to be gifted with this tool.

The dogs were thrown the bones. They growled and snarled as they gnawed at the tough tendons.

We went back to tending the fire. I washed my tools and began again on the carving.

After a few minutes of carving, he said, "That looks like a Spirit Eagle."

"How is a Spirit Eagle different than a regular eagle?"

"It is something that we feel inside us."

"I am carving an eagle that I saw once. This one was just an eagle trying to feed it's young. Spirits complicate our lives the way my tools do. My ways lead to understanding some day. Your ways make us feel much more like we are part of the world around us. It makes us feel comfortable. You know that you are part of a whole."

"Then accept our ways."

"Most of your ways are good in my eyes. The Cherokee are the closest to my people in the way they think and act. You make war to test yourselves but you can do this with sports. Far too many die.

"I see great pain ahead for the Cherokee. I wish to avoid most of it. You cannot stay away."

Spirit Walker thought for a while then said, "Why cannot we avoid this pain you talk of?"

"If a Chickasaw comes to you and wishes to fight then you would gladly do so. If I told you that you need allies to fight the white man, you would still fight the Chickasaw man."

"The Chickasaw are thieves, killers of children and women."

"Spirit Walker, have the Cherokee ever stolen?"

"Only for revenge."

"Have the Cherokee ever killed women and children."

"They killed ours."

"Your laws are based on revenge. Not every Chickasaw man is bad and not every Cherokee man is good. Whites are the same. Many are good men but some do not see the red man as a man. In their minds they see you as an animal only so they can use you or take what you own."

"You want us to wage war on the King's men and his people?"

"I want to make a new sport." Spirit Walker did not understand this change. "This new sport has the Cherokee and the red men learn what the white man knows then a lot more. The white man will come here looking to take advantage of the red man but find that they do not measure up. They come later with goods to trade but we already have much better than they have. They come with their best and we show them that we have better. They will come with their army to steal your land and your goods but find you have a better army too.

"Now instead of the white man looking on the red man as a dog, it will be the red man that can do that to the white."

"Do you have guns and powder better than the white man?"

"I mentioned one before but I can show you how to make one better than a musket. The white man would offer you thousands of beaver pelts for just one rifle."

I got a smile now. "What about cloth."

"The white man has hemp. I know how to make this into beautiful cloth that the white man will come here to trade for it. This plant takes time to grow and much land has to be farmed. I can show you how to clear the land and then make it ready to plant."

"What about whiskey?"

I looked seriously at him and said, "In every land there are some people that once they taste whiskey, they cannot stop. It is stronger than their bond to their land, to their people or to their family. It is not a matter of being strong or not. It is something inside all of us. The red man has more of these people. Whiskey will hurt your people."

"Could you make it though?"

"Yes I can. I can also use whiskey to fight the white man without drawing any blood at all."

"How do you do that?"

"I drew a map of our world last night. On it I drew our land and that of Africa. The King's men go to Africa and buy slaves the same way they buy the red men from other red man. The slaves go to a place where they work to grow a plant called sugarcane. The sugarcane is turned into rum. The ships then take the rum to England."

Spirit Walker seemed to understand this concept. "I can make whiskey here that is the very best. I could carry a lake of this to England and also to all the places the King's men sell their rum. The people will not want the rum. The ships bringing rum will not be able to sell it. Fewer ships would gather slaves.

"If we also make our own sugar then we can sell that too. The white man will not buy any more slaves because nobody will buy them."

"The king's men will not like that."

I now put on a big smile. That is part of the sport."

Spirit Walker pondered this for a while but I could see that he did not understand many of the concepts. We cooked some of the meat and I went to the men now using the shear and borrowed it long enough to cut long slabs of wood a few centimetres thick and brought them back to the fire.

Spirit Walker picked one up and said, "How did you do this?"

"The tool can cut different ways. A man must learn one way first then go on to others." I put some cooked meat on a fresh cut board and said, "Will you help me find some moss? There is another way of starting a fire."

"How do you do this? I showed you the only way."

"The natives on the other side of our planet us a bow to drill a hole or to start a fire."

"How do they do that?"

I got a soft branch and tied one of the moose tendons to it then made it like a bow but there was little strength to it. I energised the knife and cut a small depression in a palm sized rock. Spirit Walker was amazed at this.

"May I borrow your fire tools?"

Spirit Walker just handed them to me. I took the tool he had in his hands and twisted the tendon around it. I had to fiddle with the rock again but soon I had the wood going far faster than Spirit Walker could make it go. Smoke came after only a half minute.

"Let me try that."

I handed the tools to Spirit Walker and he had a fire going much quicker. He looked up to me with a serious face. "This way is better."

Some of the hunters had come back to eat and watched Spirit Walker make a fire. This tool had to be tested by all but I still did not get my sheer back until late.

Spirit Walker and I kicked the snow around long enough to find some moss. The natives used this to wipe their butts too. I dried some moss and would put some in each of the wood boxes holding the flint and steel.

I set up my tent and everybody had to inspect it. It was far larger than any of their tents and could keep six people and all their equipment dry. With the heater, they would be warm too.

After an hour I had to clean and dry the tent. The natives were not particular about keeping their homes clean.

Quick Fox played a flute and I sat back to listen. He was not bad but the notes seemed wrong to me still. I had a chance to use the cleaning tool and then went to bed early. I was tired from my watch last night. The men stayed up to talk and most of it was about me or what I had shown them.

I woke up early and checked on the natives circling the two vessels. Their number was down but not by much. The Cherokee were only a few kilometres away from the Creek and the command vessel. The Chickasaw looked to be setting up a village on Cherokee land. This would cause a battle if not another war.

A band of forty seven Creeks were coming our way but could possibly miss the Chickasaw and the pod. I didn't think they would miss the village.

While I waited to go out I cleaned my body with the tool. It felt like I was never going to be clean again.

I got out my pots and met Red Dear who was on watch. It took a lot of snow to make a pot of water. Once it was boiling, Red Deer gave me some inner bark to make into a type of tea.

As more water boiled, we drank tea and chatted.

He abruptly said, "Are you a medicine man? You use that thing to heal some of the women and children."

"Would you show my son?"

"How old is he?"

"Fourteen summers."

"He is too old to learn all of what I teach. He will want to go out and hunt then go to war. Most young men or boys are not interested in medicine. I would have to talk to the boys and the girls to see who is truly interested."

"Why do you want women?"

"Did your mother treat you when you were sick? Does your wife treat your children?"

"They are her children."

"Are you their father?" The Cherokee women ruled the family but somehow the older boy was Red Deer's son.

"Yes."

"Then they are your children too." Getting back to our talk, "My medicines takes a long time to make. The children have to make symbols on birch bark so they can remember what to do."

"I have a son of ten."

"Daughters?"

"One is nine summers and the other only seven."

"I will talk to them when we get back.

One board was used to cut the frozen meat up into strips. This was thrown in a frypan with whatever fat we could find on the meat. Red Dear ate a lot so I cooked up a lot. Some I ate myself and thought the taste to be good.

The men got up and ate silently. Giving thanks was not usually done.

While the rest were eating, I used my saw to cut a large maple tree down. This shocked the men and the dogs. I began to carve the sides. The men watched for two hours as I made four large toboggans out of the trunk. The front was much thicker because I did not bend the wood.

The men had seen these before and tied thongs to them. The moose was put on. The dogs and humans both pulled. As I worked I asked Vilchjo to show me the command vessel. I studied the situation and said, "I'm glad the Creeks and the Cherokee are not fighting."

Vilchjo said, "It was close. The Creeks claim they cannot get close so they watch the Cherokee getting shocked and burnt. There is a growing segment that sees this from a religious viewpoint."

"This is not good. Religion is good in small doses but it's going to hold us back."

"What are you going to do?"

"Get all the Creek language files from Harpo."

"It's done."

"Link me to Harpo."

I heard Harpo say, "I can hear you Michjo."

"Link me with your external speakers."

"It is done."

I spoke in the Tsalagi language used by the Cherokee. "Hello Creeks and Ahniyvwiya."

I watched all activity around the ship come to a halt.

"My name is Michjo."

I then spoke in the Muskogean language so the Creeks would understand. This was going to be alternated back and forth so no tribe felt superior.

"My great canoe crashed as you can see. It is now being repaired. My canoe flew through the air the way your canoes go through the water.

"My people make wonderful tools with their hands. We were once farmers like you. This allowed us to have large cities. Men and women had the chance to learn. Given enough time we learned to fly the skies.

"I wish to give the red man this knowledge.

"My great canoe has a great poison that will kill. In three days this danger will have passed. What we did to keep you away was for your own good.

"On the other side of the ridge is my small canoe. The Chickasaw are watching it the same way you are doing here."

I said in Muskogean, "The Chickasaw jump as high as the Ahniyvwiya when they are pushed away." I paused for a while and saw some smiles on the Creeks faces. Those Cherokee that did not know what I said soon learned.

"I am not in front of you. I am two days away in the Ahniyvwiya village of Spirit Walker. A tool sends my voice to my canoe and then it is sent to you. I would invite you all but there would not be enough food. Will the chiefs select a few men and come and visit. A good host would not ask this way but sometimes the truth is better.

"The rest can invite the Chickasaw to come. I came here in peace and I wish there to be peace with the Chickasaw too.

"I am busy now gathering food for your visit. If there is anybody here tomorrow, I will speak again. Until tomorrow."

It was not a good speech but I wanted to seem human.

We arrived back at the village. We were all tired by this time. The meat was welcome but the way the toboggans were made was a real novelty.

With Spirit Walker beside me I said to those present, "With the use of my tools, I was able to see a small band of Creeks coming this way. They should be here tomorrow at mid day."

Spirit Walker knew somebody was coming from before and he asked, "How many?"

I gave him the number and he relaxed. They could repel that many easily if they knew in advance.

I said, "We have to back out and hunt more."

"Why?"

"I used my tools to send my voice to my great canoe."

He was quiet and so were the rest as they tried to digest this. "There were many Creeks there. This morning many Ahniyvwiya arrived too. I was happy to see that they did not fight."

I paused a long time now and I almost felt like a native. "My small canoe is now surrounded with many Chickasaw." This made Spirit Walker angry.

"They are on our land."

"That is true but I asked the Ahniyvwiya and the Creeks to come here and when they came by to ask the Chickasaw to come too."

"Will they fight?"

"I don't know. I hope they do not. Now we better find some food."

"How many will come? We do not have that much food."

"I do not know how many will come but five times the number of people in this village could come."

Spirit Walker looked stricken so I said, "Let's meet the Creeks here tomorrow and we go hunting. When your people and the Creeks go to talk to the Chickasaw, we will go there. Then everybody feeds themselves."

He breathed easier now and I felt him relax. "The Chickasaw will fight."

"I hope they don't."

Some additional men raced out of the village to where I said a large deer herd was. As we got closer I noticed, moose, and elk. Further out were two more herds of deer.

During a break, I drew a map of the area in the snow and showed the men where the animals were. The newcomers were upset at this revelation but did nothing. I had studied the American Civil War battles. This had peaked my interest and I read about other peoples and battles.

The English in India had copied the Mongols by getting thousands of beaters to flush the game to a central location where they were butchered. The Cherokee did the same thing but on a limited basis.

I put my proposition before Spirit Walker. He thought on it for a while and said, "We are too few. We take the deer and these two moose." The last was said as he used a stick to point to the map.

With this decided, he appointed certain men to go to where he wanted. The hunting was the same as last time except I had Vilchjo help me decide where the animals would go. This I relayed to Spirit Walker. He looked at me a while then changed the positions of some of the men.

He said, "When can I talk — to this — tool?"

I had to think on this too and it would involve Vilchjo speaking to Spirit Walker and for the man to know that what I carried on my chest was the computer. "You may talk tomorrow in the council house. The women have to be told so they can hear too."

He just nodded his head and we hunted and then butchered. I tried to remain calm and help but it was me that caused the deaths of these beautiful animals.

There was nearly a full moon so the toboggans were pulled back to the village while the rest of us camped out. This time I was accepted more and I played the harmonica again.

When I was done, Spirit Walker said, "How many are coming this way?"

Harpo and Vilchjo had been keeping track. I said, "I think roughly half of your village will come. Nobody has talked to the Chickasaw yet."

He relaxed and said nothing.

That night I got the privilege of sharing my tent with some of the men. This was fun too except when I intercepted an elbow in my sleep.

We got up early and after an equally early breakfast, we started to pack the food out. Villagers came to us and our burdens were transferred to the toboggans.

During all this time, I was thinking of the pictures of dog sleds I had seen. I spoke my ideas to the men pulling the toboggans and they agreed that they should be built. Part of this cooperation must be because they were straining hard to pull.

When we got back to the village, Spirit Walker did not give me time for anything and got me to the council chamber. In a few minutes the building began to fill.

I had found a way around revealing the computer by substituting another. An assay drone.

Spirit Walker came in and sat but I managed to get a seat beside Deer. Spirit Walker looked at me and wondered what was happening but before he could say anything, the drone came in the hole in the roof that let out the smoke.

Vilchjo choreographed its moves as it came to me and oscillated vertically. It then drifted off to Spirit Walker and oscillated in front of him. Spirit Walker was flustered so I said, "It is just a machine Spirit Walker. It can even think but not like people. Simply ask it any question you like that requires the answer yes or no."

He tried twice to talk then said, "What kind of questions do I ask."

"Any kind you want. Up and down is yes. Side to side is no and when it wiggles, it means that it does not know what you mean. Just ask the question again but be simple as if talking to a child."

Spirit Walker managed to get out, "What are you?" The drone wobbled.

"It can only say yes or no to you. Ask it if it is a tool."

"Are — are you a tool?" The drone went up and down.

Spirit Walker asked a lot more questions and at least half could not be answered the way they should. When he was floundering again, I said, "Drone 73b! Come to me."

The drone meandered over and I said, "This is Deer. She will ask a few questions."

Deer had nearly fled when it returned and had no question to ask though she was very curious. "Ask 73b if the Creeks can get here before noon."

She finally asked and the answer was no. I showed her how to play the old game of 21 questions. She got the idea and found that the Creeks were having trouble and tired so they would get here later in the afternoon.

The drone went around the room but people were unable to ask many questions.

I whispered to Deer, "Let's get some of the children in here to try an idea of mine."

"What are you going to do?"

"Deer, you are getting upset. Do you think I would hurt any of you? I just want to show the adults something."

The house was packed and people were staring in the doorway. Some children came in. Deer introduced me to them one at a time and I introduced 73b to them. I asked the questions so the children could get the idea and let them carry on. It was slow at first but it picked up steam. The children blurted out questions and the drone answered each of them even as it listened to other questions.

I called it quits after a while and walked down to the children. I said, "Drone 73b, service mode." I held the unit and there were a few gasps. "Shut down antigravity and open upper cover."

The drone did as I asked and the children got to see what was inside. The space was filled and I pointed out what some of the parts did but they did not understand any of it.

I passed Spirit Walker the drone and he looked inside until I asked him to pass it along. It took a long time to make it around once. Most of the people had not had a chance to touch it but they saw that the rest had not suffered for it.

The drone was given back its functionality and it flew once more. The children now had a chance to touch it and the drone wiggled as if it liked the touch.

We had a quick meal as the rest of the town got a chance to touch the drone. When I saw Rabbit I gave some new commands and the drone hurried off to see her. I walked over and distracted her for a second and the drone hid behind her. She looked around for it and could not find it though her friends pointed it out. Rabbit caught glimpses but never a full view.

The desired result happened as the adults laughed at the antics of the child. I called the drone to me and now Rabbit got a chance to see it again. Her smile brightened my day.

Deer was nearby and asked, "Spirit Walker said the machine talks to you. Why can't it talk to us?"

"When I was a baby, some very good machines put some very small crystals in my head. When I think at the drone, I am actually thinking at the crystals. The crystals send out my message to the drone. The drone has a machine brain. It thinks back to me and make the crystals in my head vibrate. This sends a message to my brain telling me what the machine is talking about."

Deer and the rest were listening intently. "This drone is not very smart. It can still do some things better then me."

Deer looked at me and I could feel her wondering. I said, "A dog can run faster than me. He can smell better than me. He can even wag his tail better than me."

Deer caught the innuendo and smiled. "What can the — drone do better than you?"

"Besides fly, it can sniff out minerals. It has been looking for iron and coal. Coal is a black rock that burns if it gets hot enough."

"Why do you want that?"

"The people of this village work very hard, especially the women. If I make your life easier then you have a chance to sit and think. Perhaps the children will be able to think a lot more. Many years from now they will be able to make drones and fly to visit relatives that live on the other side of the world. It takes only half a morning to go that far because the canoe will be very fast."

"Nobody can do that."

"The white man today can paddle around the world in one year but they have to paddle around the land. With just water, they could go around twice in a year.

That afternoon, Spirit Walker and I, along with some of his people, went out and waited for the Creeks. When they saw us they stopped. Since there were only ten of us including Deer we did not expect trouble or present much of a threat.

Half of the Creeks came to us and Spirit Walker did the talking. He knew how to speak the Creek language and some of the Creeks knew that of the Cherokee. The leader was a man of thirty with a white forelock and went by the name White Weasel.

We were all introduced. I was going by the name Hawk Eye now. Only White Weasel's name was mentioned from the Creeks. They eyed me a lot. We walked together into the town after they Creeks were assured of a safe passage.

The gates around the village were open and the people were in a festive mood. The children ran around and then gawked at the visitors. It was their presence that subtly said there would be no fighting.

The Creeks were fed squash, maize and moose while inconsequentials were discussed. We adjourned to the council house where Spirit Walker and Deer were allowed to present my case to them. Deer mentioned how the children I treated were all doing much better and some wounds had completely disappeared.

They talked for over an hour before Spirit Walker brought out a drone in his hands. He flipped around is if a toy as he talked about what it really was. He then tossed it into the air with two hands. When it didn't come down pandemonium broke out and the Creeks fled.

They stopped in the street until we emerged and the conversation got much stronger. The name Hawk Eye was used and how I had come by it. The other things I had done were mentioned. I would have liked to stay away from the supernatural a lot more but I was not doing the talking.

Spirit Walker called the drone and I sent it over. He began asking questions and the answers were observed. The Cherokee, and especially Spirit Walker, like to shock the Creeks.

I finally got a chance to talk and used the Muskogean language. In the last few days, I had learned a lot of Tsalagi by having Vilchjo translate my ideas. Now I was back at the start again.

A great deal of respect had to be shown Spirit Walker especially in front of guests to the village. As good naturedly as possible I corrected some of the ideas that had been mentioned to stay away from religion. This was impossible but I did my best.

I talked passionately about my world but claimed it was what was best for everybody. They liked the idea of natives living their way and when they wished, they could fly to a far country. To compensate for the native love for mayhem and slaughter I pushed sports. My time did not have paid professionals in sports but we did have full time sports enthusiasts that were loved by millions of fans.

The natives knew of lacrosse and I talked of representative games with a passion. I was one of those enthusiasts as well as a player.

I used my own body as a representative and described my people. The trouble I had keeping up with the hunting party was touched on but only lightly. I could not be self depreciating. They did get the idea. They could play sports and be acclaimed by millions of people with little trouble.

The natives were quite interested in weapons and I mentioned what was used in sports. They did not believe me. Spirit Walker had mentioned the use of the sheer and this I retrieved. Spirit Walker calmly cut a thick portion of firewood the way a person would cut a thin sheet of plastic.

Spirit Walker used his table knife to cut away wood and I opened my knife and did the same thing but now in rock. They were suitably impressed.

I said, "My tools fly over my great canoe and my small canoe." I paused the way I usually did now. "Screaming Eagle of the Ahniyvwiya and Great Bear of the Creeks have talked about the Chickasaw."

This really interested them because when they left, there were no appreciable number of Cherokee nearby.

White Weasel said, "What did they speak of?"

"I can send my voice to my great canoe with little trouble. I spoke to the Ahniyvwiya and the Creeks while pulling a load of meat that the Ahniyvwiya took." They did not believe this. You will find the truth of this in a few days when you meet your people. They are coming here with the Ahniyvwiya and the Chickasaw to talk."

They looked at me weighting my words and looking for deceit. "I did not hear of their words. I told them of the danger of poison around the great canoe and then I mentioned the Chickasaw around my small canoe."

White Weasel said, "What of your people?"

"White Weasel, I am the only one of my people here." Now everybody was shocked. They assumed that the command vessel had at least a few people in it. "My tools work to rebuild."

"How can this be?"

"You speak of the Great Creator making animals and man. My people strive to learn the way your people struggle to hunt or go to war. We have learned much of the secrets of life."

I let them digest that for a while.

White Weasel reiterated my words, "You can make life?"

"Yes."

Now I felt nothing but awe from them and it was bordering on the religious aspect. "My people are like your wise men or medicine men. We live and die the same as you. Some are foolish and some are lazy but most work hard. I would give a small part of this knowledge to you. Over many years you will get more until you could do what I do."

Now there was a very long silence until Spirit Walker said, "Tell me of the drone."

"It is a machine that understands only four things. One is like a stream with no water, a stream with a little water, a stream with more water and finally a stream that is full."

"I do not understand."

"You asked questions of the drone and it said yes or no. It used just two ways to communicate. You can build these two choices to do nearly everything. Four choices only means that it is easier to make those decisions. To understand this would take at least half of a year. I have studied since I was an infant so it was not too difficult to stay on one task.

"The tool has to do many things by making simple decisions. It does a great many of them and does them very quickly. Many of my people think the decisions being made mean that the machine is alive. It is not but many still feel that way."

Spirit Walker said, "This is very difficult to understand."

"I agree with you. I saw everything I wanted to see as a child so I could understand that machines fly and other machines do work for us. Since I believed this already it was easier to learn more as I got older. You may not be able to learn much but children can learn a lot more. They can tell you what they have seen and what they have made with their own hands. Real learning may not really begin for four or five generations."

"How will they eat if they have to learn all the time?"

"This part you will like. In my canoe is a lot of food. The food has been changed from what you know. It will grow faster and taste better. You would have to plant the seeds. These few seeds will grow into large fields that will feed everybody in time."

"We cannot do all that. There is too much work."

"You will work less. You will use machines and one person can do the work of everybody in this village. This land is rich and the red man will be prosperous. The Ahniyvwiya men will play the Creek men in lacrosse. If the winner is strong enough they will play the Ahniyvwiya women." I said this with a smile and they smiled too.

I spoke to the women now. "Children will not die of disease like they do now. They can grow and learn. Very few women will die while giving birth. Life will still be hard for a while but much easier than now. A house will be warm in the winter and cool in the summer. You can wash in water as if you stood under a small falls. You will have a place to shit and piss without going outside and especially without smelling."

Spirit Walker said, "I do not like to sit around all day."

"Changes come slowly. You hunt, play sports and play with your children. When you get older, you play easier sports and play with your grandchildren. When you are old it will be a full time taking care of your great-grandchildren. What will be different is that you will be warm in winter and have lots to eat."

"This is hard for me to see."

"The Ahniyvwiya and the Creeks will soon meet the Chickasaw. I do not want a battle so I will show all of you what it is like in my land. This will be with visions as if you are looking at the land from the top of a hill." They had few words that would lend themselves toward describing a video clip.

The rest of the day I gave a demonstration of my equipment but left the laser and stun gun alone. Spirit Walker was happy to go with me and cut down a tree. I had adjusted the settings.

The village got a lot of firewood as Spirit Walker then White Weasel cut branches. The Creeks that remained in the woods were sent food but they did not come in.

That night I completed the eagle with the fish. Instead of giving it to Spirit Walker, I set it in place in the council house. I finished my other carving of a branch. This was a Cherokee woman trudging along with a basket on her shoulder.

During the day I had saved some of the wood from a tree that had died recently. I cut the features of the head of an infant. The neck had a flange to it. Before it was time to go to Leaping Fawn's home, I had the hands and feet cut too.

Leaping Fawn was not alone, she had Otter with her. I asked, "Should I sleep in my tent tonight?"

Leaping Fawn said, "No! Otter wishes to learn more about you."

The woman was a little older than Leaping Fawn. She was also as muscular as me which suited me fine. Most women in the Pack lands were strong and physically fit.

Otter was nervous but she was also horny. I said to her, "I am not looking for wives. There is far too much to do for that."

Otter said, "I only wish to know more about the man I see."

"Would you like to see more?"

She started to take off her buckskin so I guess she did. For some reason Leaping Fawn wanted to leave and I said, "Please stay if it does not offend either of you."

The two talked for a while and Leaping Fawn hesitantly started to take off her clothing. The children were pretending to be asleep on the far wall.

Tonight I started with Otter. In less than ten minutes she had an Earth shattering orgasm. The second came much easier. While Otter recovered, I worked on Leaping Fawn. I then alternated.

I was sure the village thought I was killing the woman but the two did not seem to care in the least. I got to sleep late and found a warm spot between both of the women.

I woke up to find two happy women making breakfast. There was also two more children here. A boy of ten was presently called Sunshine and a girl of eight called Bluebird. She would keep her name while the boy would get a more manly name later.

The women helped me the way they helped the youngest children. It was their way of saying they would treat me nice if I continued to do nice things to them.

This time I did not mind eating the food because I knew that I had supplied the village and Leaping Fawn with meat.

Before I left, I got Leaping Fawn alone and asked, "Will you make something for me."

"I'll do whatever you want. There is little to do in the winter."

I handed her the head and extremities I had cut and said, "Make a dress that will suit the size of the head. A thong at the top will attach it. Stuff it with some grass. I'll find some glue and find some hair to attach to the head."

She looked at the head and said, "This looks like a toy."

"It is. I think Rabbit will like it. It will be a gift from both of us. I'll try to make other gifts for the rest of the children when I can."

"All of the children?"

"Carving takes little time for something like this and the child should enjoy it."

"I'm sure they will."

Vilchjo sent me reports on the progress of the Creek and the Cherokee war band. I informed Spirit Walker and White Weasel about this and showed them a map drawn on deer hide.

White Weasel said, "We should hurry. Even if you do not want to fight, we should learn more with our own eyes."

Spirit Walker said, "White Weasel is right. We should hurry there."

We stocked up on food and collected the remainder of the Creeks. We now numbered an even hundred. With better footwear and more determination we got near the pod in only an hour. Scouts were out and came back with the same information I was giving the two leaders. The Chickasaw were trying to dislodge the pod even with the burns they received and the shocks. The leaders were not too concerned because it was slaves that were doing this work. I knew this because a high percentage of them had only one foot.

A net was put around the pod and it was attached to the longest cord they could fashion. The Chickasaw themselves had to help. The pod had been moved a few metres but the major work had been in getting it out of the hole it had formed when it crashed.

Spirit Walker whispered to me, "They are trying to steal your canoe."

"Yes, but they cannot get in. Once the canoe is repaired, it will simply fly to where I want. I can let them play with this like a team of boys playing a sport."

He thought on this while we watched.

There looked to be 643 Chickasaw and 383 slaves. It was the latter group that showed the most burnt clothing. Spirit Walker and White Weasel filled me in on how the Chickasaw treated their slaves. The fact that some were Creek and some were Cherokee didn't seem to bother the two men as much as I thought it would.

The Creeks treated their slaves a lot better but it was the Cherokee that were the best. Actually a slave to the Cherokee was no different than another family member. This I figured had to do with the Cherokee being a matriarchal society.

We had settled in to wait the arrival of the Creeks and Cherokee. Spirit Walker and White Weasel studied the land so they could talk to their people about what they knew. There was an overall chief but he was not like a king. He was just the strongest leader. To get cooperation, he had to convince the other tribes to follow.

Smokeless fires were made and we ate a warm meal. We no sooner finished than Vilchjo warned me, "The Chickasaw spotted some of our scouts and sent twenty seven warriors out to investigate. More are preparing for battle."

I said to the natives, "The Chickasaw saw the scouts and," I flashed three pairs of hands to show the number. I used the map and Vilchjo fed me the information. Spirit Walker and White Weasel were all for attacking but there was only a hundred of us. Some were women though they could fight too.

They started to run off when I yelled "Stop!"

They did and turned to me. "This is what I want to stop. You rush in and kill a few Chickasaw and the rest of the Chickasaw kill us. Where is the planning you wanted to use? Where is the cunning? You act like children playing at being an adults."

They were very angry at me now. Some of the Creeks came to me with intent to beat me in retaliation for what I had said. Before I could say more two of them struck at me with their fists. Judo was a compulsory sport in our land and I used it now for the first time in anger. The natives were larger then me and much heavier but they fell heavily. I was hit a glancing blow by the second man but I threw him onto the first that was trying to get up.

It was White Weasel that yelled, "Stop!"

The two warriors did not heed their leader and came at me again. Mindful of what they could do I kicked instead of using judo. I hit this man in the face and I cringed at the pain I felt in my own brain. This slowed me down and I was hit by the other man. I fell backwards but White Weasel was now striking his own man with a club he had.

I got up as quick as I could but did not go near the two. The natives felt I would burst in and try to kill my opponent.

When the man fell unconscious, I felt the hate thick and strong and it was aimed at me.

I said, "White Weasel you planned on leading the Chickasaw toward your people. Why not do it now. Run and lead them into the trap you planned."

"Our people are far away."

"Lead them into our own trap but far from the rest of the Chickasaw."

"You do not give me orders!"

"I give you advice. Take it and die in shame or live in glory. Fools deserve only shame."

Now it was White Weasel that wanted to kill me with his bare hands if possible. He controlled himself somehow and barked out orders and struck his men to get them ready to set up the ambush.

Spirit Walker said, "He could have killed you. He wanted to."

"He would have tried. Fools are people who do not think past the present. He came for glory. History is full of people like that."

"What are the Chickasaw doing now?"

I used the map again and showed the approaching band. "The Ahniyvwiya were spotted. Three men are charging the Chickasaw."

Spirit Walker stood proud and smiled. I said, "They will die in battle and three men will not be able to hold off the white man. Your people are bleeding. The whites will just gather you as slaves and send you off to be castrated." I did not know if this was true but I knew it did happen at some times in our history.

Spirit Walker's face changed dramatically. Death was much more preferable than castration.

Vilchjo said, "The three are now dead."

I told Spirit Walker what had happened but he felt good about it. He only wanted to know how many of the enemy died. He frowned when I told him none.

The Chickasaw band spread out to look for more and in five minutes, some Creeks exposed themselves and ran. The Chickasaw were just as bad and screamed as they chased the two men.

I watched the main Chickasaw band as well as the smaller group and gave a running commentary on the chase as if I were a sports commentator. When the Chickasaw thought to slow down to stop the chase, one of the Creeks fell and called for help. The other one came back and helped his friend. The Chickasaw took heart and continued their chase with the distance getting shorter and shorter.

Just when the Chickasaw thought they had the two, the other Creeks burst out of the trees and attacked the tired Chickasaw. I watched the battle with horror. Living beings were being torn apart. They clashed with a fierceness I had never seen before. Even our sports were never even close to this.

In the end the Creeks went among the Chickasaw and used their stone axes to finish the few off. I could take it no more. I severed the connection and turned to the side to empty my stomach.

I wiped my face with snow and finally got to my feet.

Spirit Walker stood proud and said, "What happened?"

Instead of giving straight facts my anger and frustration coloured my words. "The foolish Chickasaw died bravely and they weakened their force when their enemy approaches."

"The Chickasaw were always foolish."

"Yes, but the Ahniyvwiya and the Creeks were going to do the same thing."

The main Chickasaw force sent out more groups to investigate. They were in Cherokee territory and had good reason to prepare for an attack. Their people were very unorganised and they would not know if their patrol had been killed for a while yet.

White Weasel strutted back and said, "Did your little — thing, see what we did."

I was pulled two ways. "Yes, you used your good sense to kill the Chickasaw and you're alive to fight again. You're a strong and brave man that we admire." I saw him smile. "If you just stop for a few heartbeats to think before you act you will be a worthy leader. If you study what others have done in the past and then think longer, you will be a war leader that the world will respect."

"I always think."

"You do but pause a bit more. The Chickasaw could have been luring you into a trap just as easily and you would have died. I would miss you."

He didn't have any expression to show his feelings but I knew he was torn. He gloried in killing an enemy. He was possibly thinking of moving up the Creek hierarchy now.

We discussed White Weasel's attack and worked to see what we could do to make it better. White Weasel was put out until he realised he might be able to kill more while taking fewer losses.

When this discussion was winding down I asked, "How could you take the enemy without killing them? Taking warriors alive is much more difficult than sacking a village of women and children."

White Weasel got upset again then calmed down. He must have thought I was insulting him. "We use shields and stone clubs. A few get killed but not many."

I was thinking of using my stunner but I had to be no further than five metres. I could set the weapon to kill but then I had to be only two metres away. The natives could lead a stream of Chickasaw by my position and I would chase them down and take out the stragglers until I got to the front.

The native arrows may be slowed down or even stopped by the material I wore but their spears would go through and both would break bones at the least. A night time attack would be best where I walked in and stunned everybody.

Deer said, "Why not kill them? It's safer. You can talk to other Chickasaw is you want them to help you."

"Gaining allies is best not done on a pile of bodies. I want them to want to help me."

Spirit Walker said, "Let's do what White Weasel did. We will outnumber each group."

"Ok by me but let's make some clubs."

Spirit Walker was happy with this and used the sheer to cut clubs for all of us. It was best with two clubs the way the natives played their version of lacrosse. One club was used to block while the other struck the opposing players.

Spirit Walker and White Weasel set up some ambushes and hammered their people that useless deaths would hurt their village and people.

We made continency plans which was another activity never done. When I suggested it they thought and said I was not a man. The Cherokee at least would consider this because they knew me longer.

A group of fifteen Chickasaw and a few dogs were lead into a trap and only five humans died. The next time we had forty but sixty were right behind. The dogs were in the lead and more than a match for the dogs with us. With five men we let the first group pass and we fired from a long distance at the next group. They yelled and stopped to see if they were in a trap. They spread out and found no enemy so they charge ahead. I stunned a few and fled to the alternate ambush site.

I never ran this fast in my life. I was frightened to death as arrows occasionally whizzed by and glad that the dogs were with the first group. The screaming of the Chickasaw put extra speed to my heals but the pursuers were running faster because the game they chased was so near.

Vilchjo was giving me updates of the pursuers as well as tips as to where to run. I was lagging behind the four Cherokee. We had not made it to the ambush site when an arrow struck my side. It gave me a lot of pain and I concentrated on healing it. The arrow did not penetrate far and fell out again. My running was not as fast and I knew I was going to be caught and killed until a belated idea came to me.

I ran past a large tree and abruptly stopped. My suit could change to match the environment. I ran back to the tree and stood against it as the suit changed.

The first Chickasaw ran by and looked for me but didn't stop. He called out about the tracks though. The warriors ran past and only slowed a bit to look for me. I was busy counting but had to rely on Vilchjo because I was too worried to think right.

When the last man ran past I stunned him and ran after the warband. They were spread out but I took those to my right so the rest would fall into the trap set for them.

The pain in my side grew but it was mostly from running. I did not stop though. Ahead I could hear a new kind of call and hurried in that direction.

Vilchjo placed the Chickasaw on a map in my mind and I took them out one at a time. Not all were going into the battle. Though some would be killed or ridiculed after some still ran away.

Minutes later I came to the battle and found many wounded and dead. I used the stun on any that came at me even though some were Creeks, Cherokee or dog. Sometimes I had to hit two opponents.

Minutes later I spun around with my fist at my side and aimed in front of me. I was out of breath and not thinking straight. Individual men and dogs were standing all around until some started to kill the unconscious enemy. I just stunned them too. The pain I felt inside was nothing to what I felt externally.

Deer came to me with concern on her face. "Hawk Eye, Hawk Eye! Do you see me? I am Deer of the Ahniyvwiya."

I felt horrendous pain but knew the person in front of me was Deer and I wondered why she was talking to me this way. It took three tries before I said, "I see you."

"I am not going to attack you." I felt like crying.

Somewhere in my mind I wondered about her words. Why would she think I might do a thing like that? "I would not hurt you. Why do you say that?"

"You killed our own people."

I had to get hold of myself and then manage the pain. This was the first and I hoped only time I was in a life and death situation. I looked at the men and animals on the ground and went back in my mind about what I had been doing. "I did not kill. They fell asleep."

"Asleep?"

"Their chests move."

"Why did you attack us."

"They were killing those I — captured. I do not kill an enemy like that."

Deer looked at her people. They were easy to distinguish because they were bald or had the strip of hair. She saw that they were still alive. She tried snow to their faces but they still did not respond.

I called the med unit to me and began to treat the people. I did not find White Weasel until later. He had a split skull and was dead. In his hand was a spear not a club. Spirit Walker was wounded and the med unit did the best it could for him and moved on.

Two more med units arrived from the pod and began to help. There were 17 active Creeks and 19 wounded. The last 11 were dead. The Cherokee had similar numbers and we started out with the same number. I wished I had a barrier to keep the pain out.

The med units revived the allies that were stunned and they looked around in wonder. Their anger and killing lust was less now but not gone. Six Cherokee and three Creeks went back with me and carried the stunned Chickasaw to the scene of battle. This took three hours because of the effort and the number.

Vilchjo told me, "Another group of Chickasaw had heard of the first battle and came in. Instead of forty they faced nearly their own number. Only 21 from the group that were chasing you made it to this battle."

"Are there any more around?"

"Yes, but not near. For some reason the Cherokee and the Creeks have stopped their advance and may not be here until late. From my understanding, it's doubtful if they will attack until at least dawn."

Spirit Walker was conscious now but too hurt to stand. Since he tried to get up I had the med unit paralyse his legs. He was able to give orders and some of the Creeks followed them too.

We made a temporary camp here. The village was on the other side of the pod now so taking the wounded there would be difficult. Deer now used the sheer to cut boughs to lay the men on and to build makeshift shelters. Some of us went back to our temporary camp and brought the hides and supplies.

The Chickasaw recognised that they were being attacked when the men did not return or when some of the people chasing us escaped. We could not move that many people and we had to stay and defend them.

Vilchjo kept me busy during the night as I stunned scouts and dogs looking for their people. Dogs were the most problem because they were fast and harder to see.

It was an hour or so before dawn and I found myself trying to recover. I had ran to intercept a new group of scouts that were looking for their people.

"Vilchjo, give me an overlay of the Chickasaw."

"Yes, Michjo. What do you propose?"

"They left themselves open to attack on this side. I took out the sentries too."

"You are going to take the camp?"

"If I do it then there will not be many deaths. I hate the killing so much I could just curl up and cry."

"I understand but it's dangerous for you and there is only one Pack member in this time and set of dimensions."

"That may be true but I'm running on adrenaline and the time is right."

"Then I will help you."

"Thank you, Vilchjo."

My camo suit stayed functioning as I walked by the Chickasaw tents and stunned the inhabitants. It was better to not have the leather in the way but at the range I used, it worked fine. I cleaned out a wide segment before I headed to the centre and the pod. I just did concentric circles I could not get the sentries in time so I stayed in the centre of the group of tents and waited. I ate a little and used a med unit to keep me awake.

The sentries came and I managed to stunned the first six. There were seventeen more and very cautious. With Vilchjo spotting the sentries it was not hard to chase after them and take them one at a time.

Vilchjo and Harpo sent drones that hovered around me. If an arrow came my way it was deflected. I had to send the drones away because I was harder to see without them.

There were seven left when a screaming was heard. The Cherokee and the Creeks had decided to attack. The last sentries turned to flee but I got them first.

The attackers found no opposition and slowed down. They looked in the tents and found people but none arose to do battle. When I came into view they raised their spears but then put them down as I shifted in and out of visibility. At ten metres I made the suit solid white and just stood.

There were at least seventy men and more arriving all the time. I called out, "I am Michjo but now called Hawk Eye. I thank you for coming to help me. We can have our talk here."

Nobody spoke so I switched to Muskogean. There were still no responses and I knew the encampment was completely surrounded now.

There must have been a lot of talking because it took twenty minutes before eleven people stood facing me.

A large man with a three centimetre strip of hair spoke first. "Are you a magician?"

"Not the way you mean. My name is Michjo or Hawk eye. Who are you?"

"I am Screaming Eagle of the Cherokee."

"Do we have some reason to fight, Screaming Eagle?"

"I do not think so."

"Good then I'm so tired. I could fall over. Please come forward and introduce your friends and allies."

"Is there a spell on this place?"

"What you see was done with a tool made by man. It makes people sleep instead of killing them. They will wake up by mid morning with a headache. You have nothing to fear in this camp. I ask you though to tell your people to not hurt the Chickasaw or their slaves. They are under my protection."

"They will not be harmed." He turned and spoke to his lieutenants and so did the other chiefs.

I found some spare hides and I spread them out around a small fire and said, "My land was once strong and brutal. Our people have matured to a kinder race. I thought myself strong. When I came to this land, I raced with the Ahniyvwiya and the Creeks. I know I am not that strong. I have so much to learn. I have powerful tools that will help me do what I think is right for the red man and then for the white."

Screaming Eagle said, "What is right?"

"The red man is supreme here but in years to come the white man will push and kill until the red man is pushed off to an area that is almost worthless. The white man will give gold to each native to stay on this land. I want you strong enough to keep some of the good land. There are so many white men coming that you will have to share. Like a starving wolf, you have to be ready when the animal wants more than you are willing to give."

"How do you see this?"

"I am sorry, my mind is tired. I am a poor host. Will you introduce me to the rest of my guests?"

Screaming Eagle did the job and embellished something about each of them.

I gave my spiel to them which lasted long enough for the Chickasaw to begin to awaken. They wanted to fight so I asked Screaming Eagle to ask his people to disarm them.

Screaming Eagle asked me after he sent the order, "Are these your slaves now?"

I wanted to immediately deny this but I paused to think. What I wanted was cooperation. If it started out as slavery it might lead to active assistance.

"I have to answer you honestly, I do not know yet. I can speak Tsalagi but I know few of the customs of the different groups of red men. I want people to help me build a new world. People argue all the time and it takes a long time to get anything done. I am strongly opposed to slavery in all its forms. I have to free the slaves here but how will they eat? Will the Chickasaw come seeking vengeance and take them back? How will I protect the slaves until they find their own way in life?"

An old man by the name of Badger asked, "You do not want slaves?"

I could feel greed so I said, "I am not going to free the slaves so somebody else can claim them. Some of the slaves are probably Creeks. I will talk to them and they can go where they wish. Perhaps I can take care of them with some help."

Badger asked, "What about the weapons and clothes?"

"The Chickasaw and the slaves would die. I do not want them attacking me but I want them able to protect themselves and to hunt."

A young man by the name of Turtle said, "This is Cherokee land."

"I am not disputing that. Spirit Walker was hurt in a battle not far from here. My tools are tending the wounded and the sick too. It's possible he will allow me to stay here."

"What gifts can you give him?"

I thought of all the varieties of fresh food in the stasis unit. Most had small seed but all could grow with the proper inducement. For now though this would not sound like a suitable bribe. "My gifts to him are the same as my gifts to all red men." I stoped and made him ask.

Finally he said, "What gifts do you give us?"

"Many die of disease. I can stop that."

"All diseases?"

"Old age can be held off. I should live to — three times the age of the usual old man. I will live longer but I will not be useful."

This had them thinking for a long time. Screaming Eagle said, "What use is it to grow too old to do what you must?"

"You are right but I will live three times that age of an old man and be vigorous. Some old people go for a walk in the trees and never come back. Our people do that too. Some old men can still teach."

There was another long pause until Badger said, "What else can you give us?"

"I trade for cooperation. Once I get that the rest are gifts. Health I mentioned will come to all. I have wonderful seeds. The insects do not care for what comes from the ground but men do. I have a simple way of clearing the land so crops will grow. The new food you grow could be sold to the white man for gold. I will make beautiful cloth. The white man will come to the red man to buy this. I will make a road of steel and a road of water to carry this cloth and food. My biggest gift to you will be the knowledge in my head."

"Why would you give us this?"

"All people in my land have this knowledge not just a few. I am the only one of my people here. When you can stand up to the white man I will start giving him the same thing."

"What about weapons?"

"Weapons you will get but the men to get them will form a war band that never breaks up. The English, Spanish and the French have it and that gives them the power. I do not want one Chickasaw warrior to destroy a Creeks village the way I took the Chickasaw here.

He sat up now. He must believe because I had just done the same thing but without the deaths.

We adjourned for a while. Screaming Eagle sent men to protect Spirit Walker and the other wounded. I went to the pod and found it upside down. With some help I got the unit rotated a few times until the floor was down. I went in for a change and a shower and felt much better. I knew I would have to pay for my extended wakefulness later.

I brought out a dozen packages of food and offered them to my guests. I ate first and used a fork. There were not that many utensils left so they used their fingers or a knife.

Other than the wonder of self heating food I was able to get a few plugs in about reading. The packages had lots of information including the date they were prepared.

For the next while I pushed the idea of a rationally thought out language. Esperanto was the best so far and one I knew very well. I stressed what the white man saw when he looked at a red man and how this image had to change.

Other than a rational language, I spoke of a rational world which looked far from the case now. I listed the good points of the red man and then the bad. I had to do the same thing for the whites too.

About the time I finished my assault on two races, Deer arrived with some of her people carrying Spirit Walker. When I could, I had a med unit fly in and work on the man. The others looked intently at what was happening.

Screaming Eagle said, "What is happening?"

I presented him to Deer and let her talk. She spoke quickly but then decided to tell all she knew about me. She repeated herself and Spirit Walker added his opinion too.

Finally Screaming Eagle said, "You are a true warrior to have taken all those men."

I said, "I was running on fear all the time. I then saw people dying for no good reason. Apart from that I used my mind instead of my emotions. And the strongest force was my weapon. A thinking a red man could have done better. He is stronger and faster than me."

"Could I get a weapon like that?"

"With this weapon, you could take over all of the red man's land. If you do not then someone would kill you one night and take it and do the same thing.

"What I can do, is give some weapons, far better than any the white man has, to some warriors. They will enforce my laws. The Ahniyvwiya, the Creeks, the Chickasaw, and the Choctaw are welcome to come and try but only the moral ones will be allowed to learn. If this works well then all young warriors may come for a year to learn how to fight with these weapons. The white man will come some day to push you away. I want you to be ready to tell him no."

"Tell me more Hawk Eye."

I gave him the idea of a militia. I had already mentioned about the with men fighting in a unit and winning while brave but foolish red men died for no reason. A good weapon could win a battle like the one I was just in but it would not always be so.

To hammer home the point I said how some people had to learn to farm. This had taken three or more years of study once but the time had increased as more factors had to be studied.

Deer went off with the eleven chiefs and showed them the use of the sheer. They needed firewood and I needed it for the slaves and the Chickasaw. I also needed a large field to plant and this area was as good as any. Deer learned of the way I wanted the roots to be cut and a tree pulled down. This way planting would not be too much of a chore.

The chiefs soon got the tool and had to use their own people to haul away the trees.

Screaming Eagle said to me, "There are others that live with us. They are white men but choose to stay with us. They marry our women."

This was interesting. "How do they call themselves."

"They may be from your clan because some of them are called Stuarts."

"Scotsmen?"

"They call themselves Scots. They fled the English. They work hard. They prefer to live apart mostly."

My name was Stewart. The family eventually chose that name in memory of Herb Stewart. I knew that the spelling of English varied with personal style. To spell the same as the rest was to not set your mark on the community. It was very possible if the Stewarts were the Stuarts of today. Some of those Stuarts were fighting the English in the Jacobite Revolution.

"Perhaps I will visit and see what they are like."

"They are strange."

There were six Chickasaw chiefs present and I had a chance to meet them. They were angry at me but I told them the new situation. I threatened to take their villages and turn their families into slaves. They had not heard of my hatred of slavery yet.

The med units had partially robbed them of the use of their legs and arms to make sure they knew how delicate their position was.

Though it was late, I wanted to make a vivid presentation. Harpo had made some large holographic projectors and a method of projecting the sound so the people close to the projectors were not deafened.

I used the sound projectors to say, "I want you to see what it is like in my land."

When everybody was looking, I began the video. Some people screamed and ran but did not go far. Harpo used my voice and the image of my body. The first thing to explain was what they were seeing. Later he had assembled all the good parts of a travelogue and displayed them so the natives could build on the knowledge they already had.

I acted as a poor host again and simply went into the pod to get some sleep.

When I woke up I had a headache and I used my ability to remove the problem. All the med units were working full time to heal the wounded and the sick. I ate a hot meal and had a shower before going out. It was bright out and Harpo had only stopped his presentation when it was difficult to see the projection.

The only person awake was me and a few people that had to void themselves before going back to sleep. I followed Vilchjo's directions and found Deer protecting the shear. I woke her up, thanked her for her help and took the tool.

A large rock was sticking up out of the ground. The saw was used to cut portions away until it was much shorter. Large flat sheets were cut about five centimetres thick. Moving the cut portions of rock would have been very difficult except Harpo had sent me some small grav units he was not using.

With some judicious carving, I made a long line of stone grills. Each pair was connected to a common chimney to keep the smoke away. Underneath was room for wood to stoke the fire.

I found our supplies and fried moose steak. The smell brought the most hungry around even from a sound sleep. These were the slaves. They knew who I was and the presentation had given them the option of working for me or leaving.

The ones I talked to all accepted the offer. "Eat but not too much at once. When others come cook for them. Some of you can sleep but a few have to stay awake."

One young woman looked brighter than the rest and not a full blood native. She was pretty in her way and I said, "Hello, I'm Hawk Eye. What is your name?"

She shook her head and pointed in her mouth. Her tongue had been cut out. "I'll call you Blue Eyes for now."

She smiled and nodded.

"It's hard but I want you to stay awake and give orders to keep the fire burning. When more meat comes and people want to eat it then another fire has to be made. Do you understand what I said?"

She nodded vigorously.

"If you want to sleep, then find somebody that can carry on."

I got another nod again.

I went to the pod and put on a harness. Three small personal grav units were chest high. Moments later I was flying north toward Spirit Mountain with the other three grav units flying behind me.

Though I hated to do it I set the stun gun to kill. I chose older animals. I was back in camp in less than an hour with a moose and two deer. When I flew in people fled like they had last night. They were all slaves though and came back. I got them to do the butchering.

Four times I went hunting and I tried to not clear out any particular area. I also looked at the areas Vilchjo had pointed out as rich in coal but some had iron ore near them but not in large quantities.

Five Chickasaw men were the first other than the slaves to see me and they fled no matter what they saw on the video. Some of the slaves had gone to sleep but others were taking over the duties. Blue Eyes was usually there to greet me.

Vilchjo said that a med unit had assessed her already and started the process where the tongue would regrow.

There were children here too but most were boys looking at taking up the trade of warrior. Girls were here to serve the food and to warm beds. Then again so were some of the boys. Some of these were too young to decide and I would look into finding their family or clan.

By noon, most of the people were getting up. They made so much noise that the rest had to get up too. I made trenchers with my saw and served Deer and Spirit Walker.

Spirit Walker complained about having to shit so I said, "Give me a little while."

"What for?"

"Just wait."

In a higher area of land, I used the saw to cut the frozen soil. Many people were watching me. They gasped as a plug of soil came up. This I put in a depression. I had stone blocks and I brought two over to lay at each end of the trench. A large tree was sliced lengthwise and I cut seven holes in a slab before it was picked up and placed over the trench and on the two stones.

Spirit Walker was too shocked to resist me as I got him to the trench. Deer got his breaches down and we sat him down.

He screamed all the time but when he sat he said, "What are you doing to me?"

Instead of answering I asked Deer, "Is he always like this?"

Deer was shocked at what had happened but now saw what this arrangement was for. It will not take long for him to figure it out. You men take a lot longer."

"Do you have any moss? I think he must be soft there."

"I'll get some."

Just as she left I found that Spirit Walker did know what this was for. Spirit Walker was red with embarrassment. I whispered, "Somebody had to go first. One day we could put a marker here to show that you tried to fill the trench at one time."

"I am not that full."

"Good then others can use it too."

Deer cleaned Spirit Walker and she had to talk about cleaning babies and this got Spirit Walker angry but he could do nothing.

I went around the camp and made five more latrines. There were 2,846 people here according to Vilchjo and I wanted them to learn as well as keep down disease. The original group of 643 Chickasaw was now 505. The slaves had dropped to 381 because of sickness or abuse.

When some of the slaves were used for sex, and not asked, I brought them close and had an assay drone patrol around the perimeter. I could not quite blame the natives because this is the way they were taught. Deer liked what I did.

The first video was scheduled to talk about military action. I hoped to show the natives that rushing in got them killed for no reason. A second one talked about germs and how they spread. A graph of the number of people in North America before the white man came and then now was shown. This was to show how few there were.

A third video showed how I wanted to work the fields. The crops were shown and then the way to store what was harvested. This lasted the longest.

At the end was a short teaser about a railway and canal system for large and small ships. The largest of today would be termed small.

Screaming Eagle wanted to talk so I brought him into the pod as I had a shower. This was very impolite but I wanted to show him some of the benefits of civilisation.

"You let water fall on you, Why?"

"It lessens the amount of sickness and it's part of our culture now. A women likes to be close to a man more if he does not stink. Men will do what their nature tells them to do but may do more if their woman is clean."

I stepped into the shower and he now saw how it was used without the occupant of the stall drowning.

While I was showering he said, "This is a very beautiful house."

"This is not my house, please look at the wall." Another holographic panel came to life showing my family and my home. Screaming Eagle started to get aroused because the people were naked. I gave orders and clothing appeared on all of them.

When I came out, Screaming Eagle saw the Dragon on my chest and asked "What is that?"

"The animal never used to exist except in people's imagination. My people took this as a challenge and actually built a living, breathing, dragon. This one did not shoot flame out of its mouth but it looked fierce. The dragon died two double hands of years after it was grown. Many people were sorry to see it go."

"Your people created life?"

"Yes, and it was mentioned in the video."

"Your people were without clothes, then they had them. What happened?"

"Our people enjoy our bodies a great deal. We are not ashamed of the way we have matured. You might think that we are very numerous because of all the love we show each other. This is not the case. Our bodies are tricked into not making what is needed for a child until we are ready. I have to also say that women and men do the same work. Men tend the children when it is their turn. Men work in the garden beside their wives."

"Do they fight together?"

"We are strong enough that we have no wars and our battles are on the sports field."

"It is hard to imagine living without fighting. We are farming people but need to keep strong to defend out land. To act like women will weaken us."

"I think you see the raw courage of the warrior as strength."

I waited and he said, "That is true."

"It is a strength but a stronger power is a thinking man. Instead of rushing into a trap, he will be the one setting the ambush. The thinking man will gather his strength until he can defeat his enemy. The red man thinks of one man and one enemy. The white man thinks of gathering others to fight a few red men. The white man will win most of the time."

Screaming Eagle nodded his head in agreement.

In a moment I said, "The red man changes very little from the day of his great great-grandfather. There are many white men. They are rich and can afford to think while the red man tries to survive. If the red man wins a battle, the white man will pull back and think of ways of using cannon, his soldiers or other red men. While you sit back thinking you have won, the white man will build a force to crush you."

"I have seen the white man's cannon. They are heavy."

"Watch this." I had Vilchjo run some of the American Civil War enactments. They were very graphic but showed how the two sides fought and how easily the cannons were moved around.

When the clip ended, Screaming Eagle said, "I have not seen the cannon used that way."

"They use this method in Europe. If you fought to save your people on a field like that, you would have to get in a hole in the ground and shoot the enemy from there. It is not a brave act but you may save your people."

"I see what you mean. I do not know if my people can hide in a hole when the time comes."

"You may be right but I have a solution."

"What is that?"

"I am not a military person but I can start to train some boys and girls. They are not so set in their ways. They would be able to shoot the enemy while hidden. They will also train the next group of children. We will make two groups of red men. One will fight the old way and the other group will fight the way the white man does. If you and I plan this with care, we can have both groups very similar."

"Will they live in a house like yours?"

"The first group will live in homes better than yours. The next group will live even better. In enough years the answer is yes. I might also point out that I will show your people a simple but better home. You could live better without your children freezing their toes."

I pointed to the screen and I showed how to saw wood and use it for construction. The house that was constructed was bigger. It had a kitchen with a sink with a hand pump and a cast iron stove. Outside and away from the well was an outhouse. A barn was nearby with horses and the plough shown in the video that was recently displayed.

In the yard in front of the barn was a large wagon filled with produce. The camera angle changed to vertical as it gained altitude then it came down in a different spot where another wagon load of produce went onto a large barge. This was the first of my containerisation attempts because the wagon was only a seat and frame. The box containing the produce was taken off.

The view changed again and the next load went into a railway car pulled by a steam powered locomotive. In each case the farmer was given gold.

The man, his wives and children went into a store many times larger than any store currently in this time-line. The man bought clothing, toys, tools, new seed and types of food he did not grow.

"That man did not dress like us. Are we to lose this too?"

"Buckskin is good and strong but warm in the summer. Find out what the man wears in the winter."

"Does he hunt?"

"In my land the fields are in the forest. Man lives with nature but not as much as you do. He shits in a hole and does not have disease. He washes with soap before he touches food." I grinned at him and said, "If a woman washes everywhere, then I explore everywhere. She is not displeased with what I do."

"I have heard that some men do that but why?"

"To please a wife that you love. Men usually poke a women until they do what they must then go to sleep. The woman will love her man more if she has some fun too."

He put on the native's stone face but I knew he was thinking.

The next day I did not hunt right away but checked on the people that needed my care. Blue Eyes was always near me. A slave was usually passive but this young woman pointed out problems. Since I could not read her mind, I used my feelings of her emotions to guide me.

We found some people that were traumatic but natives were usually very strong. A few were frightened of my simple technology and I spent a few minutes letting them know that humans built it even if machines had to do the majority of the work.

Spirit Walker was doing better and I had a med unit give him back full control of his extremities. I said, "It is not good to walk but you can take a few steps now."

"You took away my power?" He was angry.

I had to give him an answer and I avoided causing problems by formulating a lie. "The med units do this to keep the wounded still. The drones are not very smart but some things they know very well."

His anger was still there. "Why did my power return?"

"I told the med unit to do this."

He was thinking on this when I had an idea. "Did you see me fly yesterday?"

"I had heard about that. If you had come to my village that way we would have used our spears on you."

"There are three drones that carry loads for me. They can carry red men to go hunting." Spirit Walker was very frightened now. "The men need to be the bravest. These men will be the first red men to fly. Until the day they die, they can talk around the fire talking about how brave they were and tell their grandchildren what it was like to fly where only the eagles dare."

"Can those things carry a man? They are not big."

"Each could carry ten men. They are strong."

I waited patiently until he said, "I would like to fly."

"A wise choice for a brave chief."

I worked to gather poles and got Blue Eyes and Deer to help me lash them together with leather thongs. I was basically making a triangular raft. The lifting units would go at each corner. Men came by to look and I had to ask them to help instead of them volunteering. The red man's customs would have to change like the mine were now.

The chiefs came by to see what I was doing. I was getting the idea of how the natives thought and just greeted them. Turtle finally had to ask, "What is this thing you build?"

"I am going hunting. This time I can hang the animals from under this — " There was no word for frame so I used the Esperanto word. The bravest hunters in this land will ride on the top. Every tribe from everywhere will hear of these brave men. Braves will talk around the campfires that they had actually seen these men fly with their own eyes. Songs and stories will be told through the ages."

I paused for a moment then said, "Will each of you tell me the names of the bravest warriors you know?"

Screaming Eagle just arrived and did not hear my challenge and asked me the same question. "I plan on flying into the mountains to hunt. This device is perfectly safe to use. It takes brave men to be the first to do something. I was just saying that being the first means that people will talk about them for a long time."

Screaming Eagle thought while I worked and I got him to help me lash two poles together. He would see just how strong the construction was. The lifting units were placed and their tractors reached out to hold the vertices.

At my command the frame came up two metres and I got under it to check the lashings. Blue Eyes did the same thing and then Screaming Eagle had to do this as well.

Screaming Eagle asked, "How does those things hold the poles?"

I continued to work as I said, "There are some powers of nature that no other land knows about other than mine and now here. One power is like an arm that pulls. Another one only pushes. One of the drones could pick up and fly with — you have to learn numbers and new words. I cannot talk to you without talking around every idea. Anyway, a drone can pick up the weight of almost thirty of your men. It would pick up more white men simply because they are not as big." I could feel the chuckle even though I did not hear it.

Eventually he said, "I would like to fly through the sky with you."

"Then you are welcome. I need some women to make sure you men do your work well."

"You do not need women on a hunt."

"You're right but I want women to share some of the jobs with men. What man could live knowing that he would not fly with me when some women would?"

I could feel Screaming Eagle chuckle. "The Ahniyvwiya only awaited their war leader to choose."

"I knew that. To do otherwise is disrespectful."

Badger said from in the group watching us, "Badger of the Creeks will go with you to hunt." With the dam broken, more and more calls were heard.

I looked at Blue Eyes and said, "Will you fly with me?" Fear had blossomed when I mentioned women but it was less strong now. She nodded her head. I turned to Deer and she did the same.

The platform was lowered a metre and I said to the volunteers, "I will pick those that will go when I get back. I want all of you to get on now and see just how strong this is."

The Chickasaw had not been put under guard and many had fled. The chiefs though stayed near so they could not be carried away.

The chiefs were very respectful since they heard or saw that I could fly. I sat down with them instead of using my new status. "Good morning." When I sat I said, "You saw or heard that I have a tool that lets me fly. Another tool carries my game for me."

Once they digested this I said, "The Ahniyvwiya and the Creeks are going to fly with me. Two women will come too."

I could feel fear now so I knew that they understood what I was going to say. "I do not hate the Chickasaw. A new nation is forming and I want your people to be part of it."

Another strategic pause was put in. "Many Chickasaw men have fled in the night. I am not holding them captive because I do not like people to have slaves. The remaining Chickasaw men now have a chance to see their chiefs fly. On my honour you will not fall unless you choose to do so. Will you hunt with me?"

He said, "My arms and legs are weak with your magic."

"It is not magic. I will remove the block and allow you to hunt with us. You can also join our meetings as members." I called the med units over but they were still busy and only one arrived. It worked on Eagle Feather first. I helped him up but he wanted to shake off my assistance. The thoughts of angering me kept him from doing this. He walked around with me until he said, "I can walk alone."

I let him go and he stayed still to get his balance and walked hesitantly. I then helped the next chief until all of them were standing under their own power.

We walked over to see the platform being abused by men trying to make it crash to the ground. The framework shifted under the weight changes but soon corrected.

I said to Screaming Eagle, "Would you pick five brave warriors of the Ahniyvwiya to fly with us? I have already chosen Spirit Walker." He nodded.

"Badger of the Creeks will you find six brave Creeks?" Again I got the nod.

I turned to Eagle Feather and said, "Will you find six brave Chickasaw warriors?" He gave me the stone face and did not even nod.

Thongs and hunting gear were gathered. Spirit Walker got a spot in the middle with Blue Eyes and Deer and the rest got on but tried to stay as far from the edge as possible.

Instead of flying away, we circled the camp at the lowest possible altitude. It did not take long for the chiefs to wave like visiting royalty. After a few passes we headed toward the mountain. The cold wind rushed at us. It was an exhilarating experience to rush by just a few metres above the tree tops.

I circled the mountain so as to not put much strain on any particular area. There were bear here but now in their dens. Wild boar, elk, turkey and grouse were here but I had not seen the elk yet.

We found moose but we landed on the lake ice to get close. I let the men do what they wanted. The women stayed with me. Deer asked, "Why did you ask us to come?"

"Women lead the Ahniyvwiya. Their culture is the highest in this land. I want the Creeks and the Chickasaw to realise that women have much more to give. You two are going to have to lead the women of other tribes to fight for their place."

"I can't do that!"

"Yes you can. You'll argue with me in public. You want a tribe to get a gift but the women of the tribe have to be the ones that will convince me to do this. The men see that the women are important to getting gifts."

"Why would I argue with you?"

"It is a game. I will give little but you fight alongside the women so I have to give more. I want to stop slavery, fight disease and see that the red man keeps enough of his land to live on."

"Men will see this as a game."

"Are men that smart?"

She gave me a smile and said, "We can fool them."

One of the chiefs came back and we put out the fire we had to keep warm. The four of us flew over the carcass of the moose and we tied ropes to it. This was dragged to the ice where the animal was eviscerated. Blue Eyes and Deer were happy to do this job.

We took one more moose before we hung the two carcasses underneath and looked for game in other valleys. The natives had eaten only some of the organs and I was the only one to have some cooked. We came back to camp with the two moose and five elk from a large herd we had found.

It must have been quite a sight to see all the hanging meat and the natives staring down from the edge as they talked to their friends. I spent my time taking people for a ride. It did not work too well until I got the former slaves to get on. Most of these were children. We did not go high or fast.

I figured, I had done as much as I could this time to assist the natives. I gave out the shirts as well as the flint and steel. One last night was slated for a video and we watched how canals and railways would help get native produce to markets.

That night Blue Eyes stayed very close to me. Part of the feeling I got from her was that she had found a protector but she also wanted me sexually. When it came time for bed, Blue Eyes went with me to the pod. She was shocked with the warm shower and saddened when I told her about not looking for a wife. She cleaned me very well and I did even better for her. That night I learned that she could make noises still.

The next morning, the lifting units took the pod to the village along with the frozen bodies of our dead. It was not their custom to bury them until they could dig a pit. They also wanted the dead relatives near. Spirit Walker and Deer came back with some of the more wounded warriors. Riding with the dead did not bother them and surprisingly it did not bother me much either.

I flew back and said goodbye to the Cherokee and the Creeks warriors but the chiefs would fly home in style later. The Chickasaw were encouraged to do the same.

Later that day I flew with the chief of each Chickasaw village and their dead. I made many trips and I left the man to explain what had happened.

The Creeks were next and I was not finished until late. That night Blue eyes was even more responsive. I guess nobody had done anything like this to her before. The next day the slaves went to the nearby village while I transported the Cherokee chiefs home in one flight.

The danger to the planet was still present but the problems were being corrected.

I stayed an hour in each village to show my face. The chiefs, even Turtle, agreed to help. Screaming Eagle was the last. Only the two of us came to his village. True to his name he screamed an eagle call and we landed. I stayed the night and the village got to see some of the videos.

I figured Screaming Eagle said a few words in private because two women were competing to give me comfort. I accepted both and shocked them.

The next day I flew home. Screaming Eagle was going to give me some good looking slave women but a slave to the Cherokee is family. I took surplus food instead. On the way back I picked up more from the other villages. They knew of my seeds and would get some in the spring. I just hoped they would not eat them without gathering the seeds for the next planting.

The next few weeks were hectic for me. 381 former slaves were a real hardship on the community. I used the saw to cut the roots from trees while boys tied topes to the trees so the lift units could pick them up. Other boys struck at the roots to try to knock away some of the frozen Earth. This also cleared the land for spring planting.

The trees were cut up into boards. The bark sides were used for roofing and siding material and the rest was firewood. When the food ran low, the hunters got on the platform and we went looking for it. The food coincidentally provided clothing.

The night time was spent learning Esperanto and some particular facet that some had to learn but usually everybody watched everything.

The pod finally was repaired and it was used to wash the former slaves and then the rest of the village until it had to go to the command vessel to charge the accumulators. I would be building an antenna on the ridge later so the power for the now safe singularity could be used to provide beampower.

With the command vessel now safe, I used the lifting units to set it on the ground with the floors down. I checked the stasis unit with my own eyes to see that it was doing fine. The fruits and vegetables were important to me and the world.

Luksa had made some beautiful jewellery and had the pure metals to do this. There was not quite a kilogram of gold and perhaps a kilo and a half of silver. I thanked Luksa for the gift the way I had Nikolao for the shirts. I wondered about the two, my family and both Orabela and Juvela. Lately I had been too busy to give them too much of my thoughts.

For the next few weeks I used the pod to visit the other Cherokee tribes. I helped them pull out trees the way I had done and then work on the natives with the med units. During this time I had little to do because the chiefs were using the saw and pulling down the trees with ropes. I was able to socialise and that meant I got to intimately meet many of the unmarried women.

I dug trenches in the frozen ground and used the planks from the trees to make enclosed latrines.

When the weather got better I continued to expand on the arable land near the village. Harpo set aside some of the repair work to provide me with a plough that produced twelve furrows. It took two lifting units pull the device because they were not suited for this job. This moved from community to community to till the land as a goodwill gesture. The Creeks and the Chickasaws had responded by taking out more trees and I tilled all their land.

I wanted to go north and purchase seed and hemp only because it would be away from Georgia. It was not just security because a war had been fought where the British forced the Spanish out. The Yamasee had been asked to secure the land but something had happened and they fought the British. This lead to a two year war and the natives were killed or fled to Florida. The area was now claimed by the British and the Spanish but nobody was on the land but the natives and me.

There was a remote possibility that I might either not come back or come back late so I took all the fruits except the seedless varieties and then the vegetables from the stasis unit. These went to the village to be tasted so they would know what they were going to grow. The seeds were dried carefully and separated from similar varieties. I did not want crosspollination or worse yet crosspollination with local varieties.

The archives did not have extensive data on the New England culture or local politics. I chose Boston as my target area. Drones were sent in to search out the local dialect and to provide other information. The designs for these devices were not in our data banks but we could guess what they would have to do.

When the data came back I found that today's date was March 3, 1719. I had come backwards in time a half year more than five hundred and twelve years.



-------

Chapter 3


The journey north was delayed a week while I transported some of the Cherokee to the location near the coal and the iron ore deposit. Overburden was removed from both deposits. A small coking operation had to be constructed. I had spent my life cleaning up after improper operations but now I was doing the fouling. My justification was that it was going to be small and when we enlarged the operation, we would make it cleaner each time.

Once the dangers of the coke gas and fumes was mentioned, we worked on making a small cupola. Clay was used over a thin wood form and then heated slowly. Once this was constructed, the hot coke gas was ducted to the cupola and the gases lit. I tried to bake it slowly. Everything I said had to be said many times and I reinforced my claim that the natives needed a written language.

A bloom was made and I had to use ceramic tools to extract it and then beat out the slag. We had no metal hammers. The first thing I did make was a hammer and I had to rely almost completely on Vilchjo and Harpo. A large anvil was next.

The natives had watched and tried to help but I was going to leave them alone. Harpo at least would provide a holographic screen to show them the right way to do something. Education now was much more important than anything else. The world was going to change quickly now.

I left late Sunday night and flew the 1500 kilometre trip in four and a half hours. As soon as I left the mountains the snow disappeared and the land was lush and green in the moonlight. The pod was not that fast in the atmosphere. Boston was small but still one of the largest cities in North America at the time.

I left the pod in what I hoped was clothing that would not seem too out of place. It was good that I was used to the cold air for it was very cold here. I was going to come across as a trapper to start with. I had sold my furs and now had some gold. The coins I had were copies of coins from Roman times. They were worn and had the patina of age about them.

The pod gained altitude to stay out of sight but also had the same chamaeleon abilities as my camping suit.

There were many horses here and I wanted a lot of them as well as donkeys and oxen. They would pull the ploughs later and the latter two were easier to care for.

I was at least twelve kilometres from the centre of town now and began my walk. When I got closer to town I found a market. I drifted through the area while listening to the English dialect that was far from the English that was stored in the computers.

The people I passed, looked at me strangely. The women felt stirred and so did some of the men. Most men resented my looks. The natives had accepted me because of what I had done and probably because I was of another race.

Fresh and salted meat was for sale as well as withered fruit from the year before. Various grains, seeds and roots were shown for sale. I saw leather, hemp rope, and crafts made in a home.

I also saw Africans. From what I knew most if not all were slaves. There was the occasional native and these too might be slaves. I figured the slave had to be very trusted if he was allowed to go into the city to run his master's errands

I felt someone's excitement when I looked at a boy of twelve who quickly turned his head. He came at me intentionally. If I had not been on the lookout, I would not have felt his hands searching for coins.

I was quick and made a grab for him but he was quicker and jerked to one side and fell into an older woman. The woman was too heavy to fall but the boy got up and fled.

A woman managing a stall said, "Did he get your purse?"

The woman looked old but life was hard so I thought she must be less than forty. I felt that she had a kind disposition and I did not get it from her smile. Her eyes were on me now as if she were memorising my features. Humans looked for beauty in a mate so the attributes could be passed down to their children and they too would be chosen.

"No he didn't, Mum."

I had never been robbed before and nobody had even tried. If I had lost something people would run after me to return it. I felt another interested party and saw a scruffy looking girl of ten watching me while I spoke.

I said, "Hello, please pardon my manners. My name is Michael and I'm looking for hemp seeds. Would you know where to find a large quantity of this?"

"What would you be wanting that for?"

"I want to start a farm in the west."

"How many bags are you looking for?"

"As many as I can get. My parents wish some and so do my neighbours."

"Where are you from?"

I gave a big smile and screwed down my politeness and said, "I gave my name, Mum, then what I was looking for and finally an idea of what quantity I want. You have not given me anything but your concern that I was robbed. I do thank you for that."

She looked a little startled and then smiled. "You are absolutely right. I be forgetting my own manners. My name be Molly Jenkins. As you can see I sell clothing that I make or good clean used clothing."

"I'm happy to meet you Molly. I have the same question of you. Do you know where I can get a large quantity of hemp seeds?"

Molly pointed down the street to her right and said, "Go down there to the second place you can turn left and walk for five minutes. You will find Abercrombie and Sons Mercantile. Tell them Molly Jenkins sent you."

"I will do that, Molly. May I look at some of your better clothing?"

"New or used?"

"Whatever a young gentleman might wear to conduct business."

"You are a big one and — I don't think I have anything that will fit you."

"Perhaps you could make me something but I have to change my father's money first."

"The Mercantile will do that."

"That would be good. Perhaps I will go there first and see what the dandies wear along the way."

Molly put her hand over her mouth to laugh and said, "You do that."

"Then I will be seeing you later Molly Jenkins. I thank you for your concern and your directions."

"You are very welcome Sir."

This was a much more civilised place apart from the attempted robbery. It was still a far cry from what my people were like.

The number of people increased. It may be the nearness to the centre of town or the fact that more time had passed. Again I had more people staring at my face and I felt uncomfortable about this.

I found the mercantile with little difficulty. A man behind the counter stared then said, "May I help you, Sir?"

"Good day, Sir. My name is Michael Stewart. Molly Jenkins directed me to this establishment."

"A kind woman that. I'm Charles Abercrombie at your service."

He stuck out his right hand and I remembered this custom in time to shake his. We would give a hug to family and friends.

I said, "Yes she is. I wish to purchase hemp seeds for planting."

"We have the finest Sir. What quantity did you wish?"

"I would take a hundredweight if it's available."

"My, that is a lot."

"Before we go too much further I want to know if you will accept my father's money. Grandfather came from the State of Bologna. My father gave me the last of the coins."

People were nosy now as they were in the future so I said, "Perhaps we could talk in an office?"

"Gladly, Sir.

My pouch was around my neck the same as were the computer and the small med unit. I took the pouch off and slowly poured the nine large gold coins onto the table. There was an indrawn breath. The man was excited.

"May I touch them?"

"Certainly."

The man took one and examined it carefully then put it back as he took another. "I do not recognise the coins but they look to appear to be real gold. What is your wish?"

"I want to purchase the seed then convert the rest into English gold, silver and copper money. Some purchases cannot be made here. Could we discuss the exchange first if you're interested?"

"Our business is certainly interested. May I weigh the coins?"

I picked them up and handed them to the man. He wanted the gold but he did not have the same feeling as the boy had.

The man weighted all of them and used a small knife to check the ductility of the metal to determine how much it was alloyed.

The scale was in the public area so the man went to write the figure but stopped. I said, "I can cipher as well as read."

The man wrote a figure and I knew from his feelings alone that it was too small. I played 21 with him and we wrote numbers back and forth. I went by his feelings alone until I knew he was squeezed but would still make a profit.

When I nodded my head he had nodded too. He went into another room with the aid of a key and then came back with a wide variety of coins. Some were French and some were Spanish. He counted them out and weighted the gold coins. He said, "Is that sufficient, Sir."

"It is, and I thank you. I wish to purchase the seed too. I'm also looking for large portions of silk."

"Silk? We have the best of shirts."

"I wish a bolt of silk."

"That is very expensive."

"Let us discuss the hemp first."

The man did not have the quantity on hand and would have to gather it from other sources. I said, "If it is not too much problem, would you inquire if there is more to be had, the quantity and the price? I could want much more if the price is right."

"I will do that Sir."

I walked around town looking to get a wider range of coins including some of the larger silver variety. A pub sold beer and a meal of mutton. I asked the price first and then haggled. This was another thing new to me. The beer was warm and watery and the mutton I would not have eaten in the life I had left in my time. I had to laugh at myself though. I had a Fellowship Degree in Economics and I was actually haggling over some nearly worthless metal.

I wandered back to Molly and said, "Hello Molly. How was your day?"

"A little disappointing but that's life."

"Slow sales?"

"I have never heard of slow sales but if you mean if I sold a lot then I guess I did not do well."

"Then perhaps you can make me a jacket and pants?"

She gave me a bright smile and said, "Then my day is good after all. What material would you like?" She showed me what she had. None of it was complementary but I made my choice but now I had to tell her the type of jacket I wanted. She understood because the style of jacket was still popular.

I was measured in the street. I took off my jacket and held it firmly as the rest of the figures were gathered.

During the measurements I saw the boy that tried to rob me. Behind him was the girl again. They must be a team. I pretended to not have seen him and got Vilchjo to mark the boy with the drone flying above us.

When Molly finished we talked about the cost and the delivery date. Before we finished I said, "Molly, please keep your eyes on me."

"Why?"

"Always questions. What is the name of the boy that tried to rob me and the name of the girl?"

"How should I know?" I could feel her worry now. This could only be if she were trying to protect them.

"I am not going to turn him in or even beat him or her. They are nearby and trying a second time. Molly!" She had been starting to look around. "Look at me."

"Roger and Linda."

"Thank you, I will not harm that trust."

I watched in my mind as Roger's hand came close to my small pack. When it was very close I said conversationally, "Molly, would you tell Roger and Linda to stay away from my pack?"

Molly was shocked but the children were even more so. Roger fled but Linda could not get far. She walked with a limp that was more noticeable when she hurried. I caught up to the girl and passed her. She tried to brazen it out but I presented her with a silver coin.

Her eyes grew big as she stared at it. I said, "I could have caught Roger this time but it's only a matter of time before the constable gets him."

"We'll quit right now, Sir."

"That's a lie. Now I want you to go to the pub and buy us six meals. Two for you, two for Roger and two for Molly and me."

She looked at the coin and I could see that she was trying to come to a decision. To help her decide I said, "I'm a physician. I want to look at your leg."

"My Leg!"

"The one you are limping on."

"I'm used to it now."

"I look like a trapper but I'm more than that. Molly will be with us all the time. Now do you want to rob me or risk some money and possibly walk right?"

"I'll get the food but I have to leave money for the pot and spoons."

"Then do so. Tell Roger to return. I won't call the constable, capture him or harm him. On my word."

"Thank you Sir."

"Good then you may go." I handed her the coin and she stared at it for a while then hurried off as quick as she could.

When I got back to Molly, she said, "What did you do to the child? She ran off like the devil was after her."

"She is fetching a meal for us."

"What?"

"A meal is something people eat when they are hungry."

"I know that but why?"

"Besides being a trapper and a farmer, I'm also a physician. I want the children to get a good meal and I want to see Linda's leg."

"You're a physician?" Her eyes were big.

"One of the very best."

"You're buying a coat from me?"

"I need a good coat, breeches, shirt and stockings. I did not bring any with me that are suitable."

For the next while I talked about everything. She talked about herself first then I tried to find out how much she knew about politics. In this time, politics had a lot to do with the aristocracy and few of those came to the new world without a valid reason to leave the old one.

I was beginning to have my doubts about Linda when I saw the child approach. She had nothing in her hands but she sported a large bruise on her face. She was crying and I could feel her pain but it was not the kind that caused the bruise.

The girl came to me and tried to look me in the eye but couldn't. She sobbed out, "The innkeeper kept the money. He said we robbed him before."

I picked up her chin with a finger and said, "That's ok. Let's go to some of the stalls and buy some bread and meat?"

She still cried and she felt bad. "What is it Linda?"

"I lost the money you entrusted me with."

"Money is not important. One day it will be worth nothing. You will get what you want by asking and paying with a smile, a song or a story."

She still sniffled but she felt less bad.

Molly said, "See Lem. Linda knows the way."

I turned to the girl and said, "Let's go see Lem."

Lem turned out to be a baker that sold salted meats. I chose the bread and pointed to a selection of meats and cheeses and with my fingers said, "How much, Lem?"

Lem looked at Linda and gave me the price. I paid it and asked to have the meat sliced. We walked back to Molly's place and I made sandwiches. The cheese was eaten by the bite.

Linda ate her portion ravenously until I touched her and said, "Eat slow. Nobody is going to take your food."

With pleading eyes she said, "I'm just hungry."

"Then eat slow. You could get sick and bring up all the food you ate." She slowed down a lot then.

After she ate, I got her to sit on the board containing Molly's products and I examined her foot and lower leg. All the time I was pushing my healing into her. The med unit was taken out and I ran it over her leg then continued to do the rest of her. I stopped at her head and I stayed there a little longer.

I put Linda down and she asked, "What is that?"

"It's a med unit. We use it in my country to diagnose and treat minor ailments. Some problems can be corrected with this unit but sadly not all of them. You had a fracture there once and it didn't heal right. You have a wealth of diseases running through you but they are now being worked on."

"You mean a sickness?"

Molly looked very worried at seeing the device I had used. Massachusetts was still a theocracy though the hangings in Salem were only twenty seven years ago. The first inhabitants of this area did not come to avoid religious persecution but to promote their own brand on all others. People of other religions were going to burn in hell and many religious groups hanged others to hasten the procedure. Some religious groups even had their own slave ships.

I monitored Molly and said to Linda, "We all have a lot of sicknesses in us. Our body has an army in us that fights the sickness. Sometimes you need a good general to lead the troops."

Her eyes were wide. I said, "In a week or two you will not have a problem with sickness. You do have troubles with your leg and a small problem with the thalamus. That's a portion of your brain."

"What's wrong with my brain?"

I put my fingers out and showed as small gap. "Some cells have started to grow wrong. The med unit may get this taken care of but it may not."

"Can you fix it?"

The med unit may take care of it but not your leg. That takes a few minutes then you have to have a place to stay for a week or so."

"Roger needs me."

"I know, Dear." I had an idea and said to Molly, "How much would you want to feed Linda and Roger for say, two weeks? That means they get a change of clothes that I will buy and their clothes washed."

She was still shaken from seeing the device. I put the unit away. Molly came to her senses and said, "Me take care of the children? I can't take care of my own."

"If I pay then you do not have to open your stall for two weeks. You can stay home and care for the children and possibly sew other garments."

She thought for a moment then gave me a price. I felt it was an honest figure and paid her the sum plus a bit more for contingencies.

She looked at the coins and said, "This is too much."

"Not at all. These two will be like puppies wanting to get fed all the time."

"I didn't say I will do it."

"No, but you want to do it."

"I guess I do."

To answer Molly's unspoken questions I said, "Our people made the musket a long time before the rest of the world found it. We destroyed what we had because of the danger they posed. We concentrated on medicine and the healing of the sick. I do not think there is a higher calling than that."

Molly thought on this and I felt her relax a little. "Are your people true believers?"

"I will give my answer this way. We believe in love of all mankind. We believe in reasoned thought. The people of this land do not have too many rational notions They are usually quite insane. They preach brotherly love but then hang others for having a slightly different point of view. You're that way too."

"Me!"

"I am a man of my word, I helped two children and will help one of those a bit more. My people harm nobody and even allow others to share their own beliefs. You saw a tool that our people use and you show fear."

"I was not afraid."

"You lie to yourself. You showed fear. I could almost taste it. One of the marks of a sane person is religious tolerance. The people here show none of that."

"But the devil comes in many guises."

"You're right but most of them are people of the cloth. Open your eyes and look. Think with your mind not with your emotions. This land is filled to overflowing with the poorly educated and the fools. Then there are the people that would use those fools for their own end."

"Who would do that?"

"Leaders stir up the people for appointments or to get elected. They use their elected positions to line their own pockets and those of their friends. They use the fools that follow them to carve out a princedom for themselves. You can tell me who, by thinking of those that use the others to that find it too difficult to think for themselves."

Molly was quiet. I said, "I hope this does not hurt a friendship that has just started. I may be a bit bias to those that are bias to others."

I got a weak smile and a feeling of relief.

I walked out of town to a still standing section of forest. The pod came down and I got aboard. The drones were out to see if the ship had been seen. The coins I brought were analysed and the information recorded. Some special purpose nanobots worked on the now alloyed gold blanks to make copies but ones that varied as if some were used much more.

The next morning, I put on my old clothes but my pack was a few kilograms heaver.

As I walked through the town I saw establishments selling head and footwear. I would have to purchase some of each if I wanted to stay here for a while. I had too much of a backwoods style presently. I would have to see what would accent my new clothing.

At the market I purchased a large leather sack and filled it with what fruits and vegetables I could find. Another area sold slaked lime and I had to buy some of this. I wanted to make a temporary cast. Linda had told me that her father just wrapped the broken bone. Nobody set the bones into proper positions to heal.

Molly's stall was empty but she did not live far away. I climbed three flights of steps in a decrepit building and rapped at the door.

A young girl's voice called out, "Who is it?"

"Hello. My name is Michael Stewart. I probably talked to your mother yesterday about a suit and breeches."

"Momma's not here."

"Is Linda there?"

There was a pause then a whisper then the child said, "Yes she is."

"That's good. I'm leaving a heavy bag near the door. If you look outside in a minute, you will see me on the street."

I had read about some of the crimes committed before the Pack arrived and the effect of those crimes on the public. There may be no need for this type of security but perhaps Roger and Linda needed a sanctuary.

The bag went beside the door and I walked down the steps and then crossed the street. From the high window I saw Linda and an even younger child. I waved and both waved back.

I found the local printer. He was the same person that put out the local newspaper. He was a little flummoxed when I asked to read all his old additions for a price. I got to read a lot and it was difficult when the language was in English with an odd typeface.

It took four hours to read all the old issues and I bought a current issue. I watched the man use the old printing press and grinned because it reminded me of home. My home where people used archaic equipment and lived an old lifestyle near a space port.

Another meal was in order now and I struck up conversations until I found a good place to eat. It certainly was popular because there was no place to sit.

A pretty girl left a table with a happy looking young man and I immediately took the booth. I chuckled as a 'serving wench' comes over.

"Hello, Sir. What may I get for you?"

My reflexes wanted to ask her name and learn about her but I had to be very businesslike. "What would you recommend."

"Why, a fine stout and a bit of pork pie."

"Then you have made a sale."

She smiled and turned away. Soon the meal came and the girl waited for payment. It was a lot of trouble dealing with fractional farthings, farthings, halfpenny, three farthings, penny, sixpence, shillings and guineas but Vilchjo helped me. There were other coins from other countries that were just as readily accepted.

I gave her a larger value coin and she went to the counter to get the change. When she came back, I used the old custom I had heard about and tipped the wench. I got an even brighter smile and a little curtsey.

Molly hopefully should be home and I wished to just page her computer to find the truth but this was not possible. Molly was home though and I was let into the small apartment.

Molly greeted me kindly and said, "Would you care to meet my children?"

"Certainly."

There were three young children. Two boys of seven and six then a girl of four. Molly said, "There are six more but they are out working."

I looked at the room a second time and said, "Where do they all sleep?"

"It is a trial sometimes especially around meal times."

I felt bad about adding Linda and Roger to her list and said, "Did Roger come here?"

Molly's face fell and said, "Yes, but that boy is troubled."

"All young boys are troubled."

Linda said, "He's worried about Da."

When she didn't say any more I asked, "What's wrong with your father?"

"He's in Debtors Prison Sir."

I looked at Molly in surprise. I guess my look of consternation tipped her off and she said, "It is a wicked place, I hear."

"This is another example of man's inhumanity to man. Every religion has their own version of what you know of as the Golden Rule. The cleric or layman will only follow this when it suits them. This is another example of the insanity I saw."

The feelings coming from Molly made me think that she was the one that was attacked. "I did not mean you Molly. I look at this from a distance and lumped humanity in neat packages which I should not do."

She said, "I did some thinking about what you said and I can see some of it now but people have always been crazy I think."

"I think you're right Molly. Are you comfortable enough to watch out for Linda for a week or two?"

"We can manage quite fine. I went out to find some better material for your coat."

"Thank you Molly. As a sort of recompense may I look at your children?"

She thought for a moment then said, "You would not do anything — of — that person?"

"I think of myself as a person at the opposite end of that balance."

Molly's eyes got very big and she stepped back.

"Hold on Molly. I'm as mortal as any other man. I think that I am just a bit more moral than most."

"You're not —"

"No, sorry but I try to act that way."

Molly thought again and said, "You may check the children."

"Thank you for trusting me again."

I checked the two boys and the girl and tried to have a good bedside manner. As I found problems I told Molly and asked if I should treat them. In all cases she agreed.

When I finished, I said, "One more person could be treated."

"I'm old."

"So old people should die? Who will take care of your children?"

She did not answer so I said, "You told me you had no relatives here nor did your husband."

"You can check me with that thing."

"Thanks for the trust again."

I hummed to myself as I moved the med unit over her body. Some things I corrected and the minor ones I asked her about. She was very shocked when I touched near her breasts and even more shocked when I brought the unit over her ovaries.

I said, "You may be happy to know that you're not pregnant."

"I should hope not!"

She had told me in the market that her husband had died three years ago. I said, "You are not that old yet. Menopause will not start for about six years for you."

"Menopause? What's that?"

I had to search for the term and said, "It's called climacteric but another word may be used. It means that a woman can no longer bare children."

"I understand now. Your med thing can tell this?"

"It can do a lot more but also not enough."

"It must be a marvellous —"

"Tool?"

"Yes, a tool. How does it work?"

"I could tell you but you would not understand the words. It would take months and you would still not understand." She looked hurt so I quickly added, "Do not feel bad. Nobody not of my country would know either."

"Where is your country?"

I had to start lying once more and it hurt me to do so. "It's a small republic in the Pacific Ocean, south of India. It's a collection of islands. We usually keep to ourselves but occasionally we go out in the world to do some good then return. When I go home, I'll write a book or two about my travels and record what I found that we might find interesting."

"Like what?"

"New varieties of plants and animals, the present workings of politics in the world and to even complete our mapping of this globe."

"Globe!"

"You're not one of those people that think the world is flat, do you?"

"It has to be."

"Use your own eyes and brain. You live by the ocean. A ship disappears behind a bulge and another one reemerges the same way. We live on a sphere."

"We were told differently."

"Only some people believe this and they push their beliefs onto you. some people study — physic or Natural philosophy all their lives but even they do not come to the right conclusions. Most people believe that people cannot fly but they can with silk and a wooden frame."

Molly was shocked again. I quickly said, "They really only glide the way some squirrels do or a hawk."

It took her a moment but she finally asked, "Have you flown?"

I raised a finger and took out the current newspaper and folded it just so. I went to the other side of the room and propelled it to Molly. It did some gyrations but actually returned to course and hit her in the chest.

She just stared at it on the floor. "Throw it back." She just looked at it in wonder but Linda picked it up and tossed it the way I had.

It did not come to me but that was ok. "Thank you Linda. It's always easier to teach the youngsters. They do not have a lot of useless refuse in their minds. They can see with new eyes and understanding comes quicker."

"Can you really fly?"

"Well, no. A machine is made to fly and I hang on."

"What if you fall?"

I had an idea and asked Molly, "May I have some thread?"

She pointed to her basket but said nothing.

I took the thread and tied it to the corners of the newspaper and tied all four together around a heavy wooden spool. I pinched the paper in the centre and dropped it. It dropped far slower than if the spool alone had fallen.

I talked to Molly but I spoke to Linda. "The air is trapped under the paper. If a man fell he would open his parachute and drift to the Earth. He has to roll when he lands or he can break a leg. Some people jump on purpose just for the thrill of falling then open their chute. I've never done that because I've always been afraid of falling."

Linda did not seem to hear much but she did excitedly ask, "Can I try?"

"Sure. Stand on a stool to get it higher."

Linda dropped it five times then Samantha, the four year-old, had to try. The two boys had to try next but in their scramble for it the paper ripped. They looked petrified so I just laughed and they slowly calmed down.

"When I was a boy I was like you two. Always in the way and getting into trouble if I possibly could.

I got down to business and put the med unit to Linda and saw a very small decrease in the tumour. It gave me hope. I said to her, "The thing in your head got a tiny bit smaller." She gave me a smile.

"You better use the chamber pot because you are going for a short nap."

"I'm not sleepy."

"The med unit will make you sleepy so you do not move. In a few weeks you are going to be jumping around like these wild boys."

All of them grinned. Linda went out to use the facilities and then came back. I got her to lay down on a pad on the floor. The med unit put her to sleep. A good med unit would break the bone where it was needed the way the command unit controlled the construction drones.

I had no such unit with me now. Some special purpose nanobots were injected where the bone need to be broken. From then on the med unit directed its little minions.

I stood up and Molly said, "What's happening?"

"The med unit is working on the joint where the broken parts healed incorrectly. In a while I have — " I saw the children so I said, "I have to do something and then the bones are put back the right way. I need some old cloth and then I have to mix up the plaster I bought today. Then the med unit gets Linda's body to work hard at doing the repair. Usually this would take many weeks but we are going to hurry up the process."

While I waited, I sat on the floor and told stories I had heard in my youth. Some were thousands of years old but still new to the children. None of the stories were violent and all of them had an important message in them.

Eventually the nanobots had weakened the bone enough. With some subtle hints Molly got the children out in the hall for a few seconds as I did what Vilchjo said. There was a snap and Linda flinched. The med unit relaxed the muscle and I put into place with the feedback from the unit.

Molly came in and helped me put some lard on Linda's leg. The boys watched as I had Samantha mix up the plaster. I used waste cloth and the plaster and then more cloth.

I used quite a bit of cloth and then put some support on both sides of the foot to keep it from moving.

Molly asked, "How long will she be asleep?"

"If I had a good frame she could wake up in an hour but I have — I have an idea. I want a small log about — six inches around and — two feet long. I don't like your measurements. It works so much better with metric."

"There's some in the back. One of the boys can get one for you."

I liked the idea. I turned and crouched down. "I need a log this long or longer and this big around." I used my hands to show them. "Will you two big boys get me two of them?"

One said, "Yes Sir!" and the other nodded as they dressed and hurried off.

Molly said, "Why two?"

"One may be not good enough."

The boys came back with an arm around two logs each. I guess they wanted to make sure too. I used my ceramic knife on the best one and cleaned off the bark. The ends had to be cleaned too. When I finished the preliminary work I got the saw out of my pack and cut a hole through the log near the end to accommodate Linda's foot.

A long groove was cut from the other end to the hole. This took the longest. I was able to fit the wood to Linda's leg as the plaster had not set yet. There was still some trimming needed until it fit well. Rags were tied around the log to secure it to her leg.

I looked at the children who sat in rapt fascination and I began to carve animals. The first was a fat puppy that I gave to Samantha. She was very pleased and ran to her mother to show her.

Robert the six year-old got a bear. John the seven year-old soon got a colt. They all had ran to Molly to show them what they had as if she had not see them.

I looked at Molly and tried to imagine when she was younger. Once I had the image I began carving again and sat there for at least two hours until I handed the statuette to Samantha and said, "Take this to your mother."

She ran fast and almost fell but got the statue to her unbroken. Molly saw the green wood and looked at the features. "This is very beautiful. Nobody has ever even drew a picture of me before. I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything. Your eyes tell it all."

"Oh! Thank you, thank you. It's so beautiful but it isn't me."

"Look at your reflection and try to remember what you were like when you first got married. I think you looked very much like that."

I thought of Linda and then the other children Molly had. I began to carve again. Linda was awoken but felt no discomfort. She looked at her foot pointing the way it had when she was born and smiled. I handed her a mermaid on a rock while brushing her hair.

"For me?"

"It is."

I left soon after with some instructions to Linda and to Molly. The girl had to use the chamber pot and needed help in doing so.

I had not gone to a black smith yet but I had passed one in my travels. A man in a leather apron was heating a piece of metal in the forge when I walked in. "Good day Sir. My name is Michael Stewart. Would you happen to be the proprietor?"

"I be and a good day to you too. What can I do for you?"

"I'm an amateur smith and I'd like to purchase some equipment for my farm."

"What would you like?"

"I'd like two of each size of hammer you have, three anvils just a bit larger than what's beside you and a dozen barrows for transporting ore and fuel."

"That will not come cheap."

"Good work does not come cheap and neither does a speedy delivery."

"Would you be wanting wood or iron wheels."

"Iron."

"There's a lot of work in making them. Would you sketch out what you want?"

"I can do that if you would but loan me a piece of paper."

The man took the iron out and beat it to form a horseshoe. When he worked it all he could he put it in a cooler part of the fire and told the apprentice to go slower.

I got a piece of dirty paper and I used the tip of a burnt stick to draw with. The entire piece was to be of hardwood with only the wheel, axle and the bearings to be iron. I would turn down the shaft and fill the bearing blocks with babbitt. They would have to be lubricated every hour or so.

When I handed it over, he said, "You have a talent there son."

"I do much better with paints."

"Ahh, an artist."

"Only as a hobby, Sir."

"I'd have to ask for ten guineas."

Guineas were another oddity. They were worth a pound and a shilling. This total was a lot of money but not extraordinary. It represented two and a half troy ounces of gold. I could get more in London but I was not there.

"Would you make a barrow or show me one that is similar so I know what I'm purchasing?"

"Right this way Sir."

He had a wheelbarrow but with a wood wheel and an iron tire. It was too small and made for a shorter man. The Cherokee were neither short nor weak.

"This is a sample of my work. What do you think?"

I talked to Vilchjo and also got Harpo involved. There were some changes needed. "It is certainly well constructed. It's sturdy and should last for years. The people working with me are large men so the handles need to be — six inches higher. They also have to be a foot and a half longer. The box has to be half again as large. The bearings I will complete."

"This will cost you more." I could feel the greed coming out.

"Then perhaps we should renegotiate. I can ask twelve smiths to make the wheels and bearings and a wagon maker make the box. The tools can be split up so I get them in a short period of time instead of waiting for one man to make what I want and then shoe horses or make hinges."

"There is no need of that, I can do it all."

"When would the last article be presented to me?"

He did some mental calculations and said, "Four or perhaps five fortnights."

This was eight to ten weeks. "I'd like a single fortnight better."

"That's impossible."

"Sir, it is not. Your price was high. You could go to the other smiths and negotiate a much better price. They would build what we need much quicker. If you are agreeable I will meet your demand of ten guineas but I will deduct a shilling for every day past fourteen days."

"That cannot be done."

"Then I'm sorry for taking your valuable time. Some other smith may find that my proposal is adequate and within his powers." I nodded to him and turned.

"I can do it but I do not like the shilling deducted from the total."

"I will also pay you a shilling extra for every day early they are."

He thought about it and finally nodded.

I restated the criteria we agreed to and I went to stand beside his anvil and showed him how much larger it had to be. He tied knots in leather thong so we had a record.

I reached into my pocket with my left hand and removed two guineas. I stuck out my right hand and said, "We have a deal then?"

"We do."

I shook and then I handed the surprised man the two coins.

"What is this for?"

"I'm a man of my word and I think you are too. The gold will show you that I'm serious. It also allows you to gather supplies for our agreement. It may also speed this venture on."

"You will not have me swear before a notary?"

"Your word is enough."

He put out his hand again and said, "It is nice doing business with you."

The blacksmith pointed out a stationery store and it was my next goal. I found the paper I wanted but was amazed at the cost. The sheets were small. With some negotiation, I got the price down but I had to buy all of their stock. This was five reams for six pounds. I tried to make them budge but apparently there was little inclination to do so.

I excepted the cost and purchased larger sheets of paper, pens, inks, brushes and some paints. All of it except the larger sheets of paper went into my pack with the gold and silver.

It was not a good idea to go back to the pod every day though it was safer and more comfortable than anything else I could find.

I stopped into the mercantile and found Charles Abercrombie still working. When he was free I greeted him warmly and he did the same in return.

He said, "We have found seed for you. There is in excess of two hundredweight. We also located supplies of silk but I'm afraid the owner wishes more than most people would pay."

"Perhaps I'll have to go to China or India to find some."

He gave me a smile and thought I joked.

"Did you by chance get a chance to inspect the seed. If it's mouldy, it's of no use to me."

"I assure you the seed has been adequately dried."

"Very good. I'm also in the market for bulk hemp. I wish to try my hand at paper and cloth."

"How much are you interested in purchasing."

"Whatever I can get providing the price does not escalate if someone thinks I weave it into gold."

"That does happen. I will see what I can find."

"Thank you. Would you know of an apartment I could rent for a month or two?"

Charles thought for a second and looked at me critically. "My family could rent out one of our rooms. The last tenant returned to England."

"What do you offer."

"It is not much. It's one room in the guest cottage. We will provide breakfast if you are awake. The servants will clean your bedding once a month. The cost will be five shillings."

From the way he felt, he was hoping a lot.

"I would like to see the place when it is convenient for you. I'm used to more pampering and I'm prepared to pay for it if that is available."

The man looked at a clock on the wall and said, "In two hours I return to my home for my noon meal. Would you care to join me?"

"I'd be happy to."

I spent the intervening time going down to the docks to check on the type of transport with my own eyes. The ships were small and had a blunt prow that would make them very slow. Many advances had been made in shipping in the next few centuries. More had been done a century before I arrived from my time. There had been a re-emergence of wind powered vessels.

The rich and the aristocrats I saw in my travels seemed to be very class conscious. The labourer would act very subservient to this group. This I felt lead back to feudal times or when an aristocrat could kill or wound with impunity.

On my return, Charles lead me to his house. I met his wife and two young children. Apparently there were six others but they were working in the family business.

I was introduced to Mary and then little Sarah and Thomas. I shook hands with each of them to the children's delight. Mary seemed to be taken by my looks and I knew that this would cause problems.

Two servants served the meal and I was polite to them too. Mary did not mind this but Charles must have some of that class conscience.

Since I was the guest, I was asked about my farm by Charles and I expanded on this. I claimed to have a large farm west of Georgia and south of Tennessee that was unorganised. It would one day be Alabama.

The organisation of my hypothetical farm was said to be not based on slavery or even indentured servants. I claimed to work with the Cherokee to cultivate the land.

The two hosts did not like natives but Mary was less bias. I used subtle and somewhat fictitious occurrences that made the Cherokee appear much more noble. I had to jab at Charles when I claimed that the Cherokee were better farmers than the whites. The natives lived with nature.

I had lots of plans for the whites but I had to understand them to get them to change their ways.

Mary asked, "What are your main crops?"

"Wheat, rice but this stays in our group until we will have enough to sell. Fruit trees are planned but have not yet been planted yet. We want to work a lot more on hemp. Paper and cloth are what we're after."

"That cloth is too scratchy."

"Yes, but we have a machine to crushes the stems better and then it goes through a process that my father invented that will break them down much more. We think we can produce clothing superior in texture and many times stronger than cotton. Clothing costs are far too high. We will capitalise on this. If we're lucky the prices will drop some."

Charles was startled. "Why would you want the price to fall? You will make less money?"

"Our family has a social conscience that few others match. If the prices drop ten percent, then more people can afford to purchase our cloth. The only ones to suffer in the short term are the existing cloth manufacturers. As we grow our share of the market will grow. Those that make cloth can now work at making clothing from our cloth."

"You would have to grow and process a great deal of hemp to make any significant change."

I agreed with him and he asked, "Is the same true of your ideas about paper?"

"That's partially true. We will use lots of our own paper to run our school."

"For savages?"

"Mr Abercrombie, I am a guest in your home and I hate to correct you but if we have a rational discussion you would find the natives to be far less savage than you think. Some of their laws and customs are different from yours. The only two things that could be said about them is that they have not found a way to work together and they are not as industrious as the white man."

"They kill wantonly."

"Are you going to tell me that the English army is actually a lot of old nannies that go about the world making children happy?"

"They do what is right for king and country."

"Precisely. The French, Spanish, Portugese and the Dutch do the same thing. They are nasty to each other and to innocent villages too. When the Spanish de Soto came to this world they killed and butchered whole civilisations. They brought disease that killed millions and when some of Spanish were driven back they claimed the natives were savages. Would you not attack an invader just as ferociously?"

"We are civilised."

"There is an old Greek proverb saying 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.' Civilisation I believe is that way too."

"Do you know of a better civilisation."

"I do, but I will not talk about it here and now."

"Our past?"

"I'm sorry but no. Many people think that it was more noble to live hundreds of years before this time but the facts are that they were usually wretches. The nobility ran unchecked. We are coming into democratic times but I'm afraid that there is a long time to still go. There is far too much corruption."

"Can you prove any of what you speak of?"

"I can discuss specific individuals and what they have done to help or thwart civilisation but you do not have access to the government records to know that what I say is true."

I talked about Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. There was lots of innuendo and I regaled them on excerpts from one of the many books that were transcribed and placed in the computers. The most scandalous to these situations was her love affaire with a Scottish huntsman.

Charles had overstayed his lunch but still showed me the room at the cottage. The place was not that large so I said, "Would you be upset if I gave you a counter offer?"

He did not like it but said, "Not at all."

"I want the entire cottage. I get the breakfast if you wish it. This cottage you will consider as my home. I will not damage the property nor cause a disturbance. I think eighteen shillings a month should do and I propose to pay two months in advance until I choose to leave."

He seemed to like the idea but instead of committing he said, "Do you have a horse?"

"If I do, I will pay a fair rent to board it in your stables."

"Will you acquire your own servants?"

"I have no idea. There is enough room in any case."

He stuck out his hand and said, "We have a deal."

Charles informed his wife of our arrangement and I walked with him back to his business. On the way we talked of many things and one was the location of a dealer in books and the location of a good doctor.

Charles asked with a worried voice, "Are you sick?"

"Not at all. I simply wish to learn."

There were a lot of book sellers. All of them dealt in used books and some new copies printed in England or here in the colonies. I later talked for a while with some men about legal facts concerning the copyright act as it applied to those in the colonies.

There were some medical books for sale and I negotiated for all of them. They were expensive and I had to pay ten shillings each on the average. Very few working men made that in a week. With the price, I would get the books delivered to my new address but I would have to be there to receive them.

Another inn provided a good meal but I left the watery beer alone. I got a chance to talk to the proprietor to find out about the spirits he sold. This was going to be one of the weapons I used to fight the, so called, civilised countries.

I was back at the cottage an hour before the books arrived. I had time to clean up. There were some pieces of furniture in the house and one was a bookcase.

Vilchjo and I went over the books after the books were delivered. I was amazed at what the people of today did not know or got completely backwards. I had seen signs in the street advertising people that would let blood. They believed that poisons and evil spirits had a chance to leave if a hole was made in a vein. I was not going to convince these people that they were wrong simply because this would lose them a very good livelihood. Letting blood cost seven shillings six pence.

Later that night Charles visited and saw the books. "Are you thinking of becoming a physician?"

"I already practice that trade. I was reading these books and having a chuckle at the foolishness of some men. There has been a long time since people started to learn about our bodies. You would think that somebody would see the obvious."

"What is obvious?"

I made a long list of discrepancies and gave the facts that an observant person could see as fact.

"Josie, one of my servants is sick. Would you look at her?"

"Lead the way."

"What would you charge?"

I thought for a few minutes and said, "I want you to observe how this person heals."

"For what purpose?"

"I made lots of observations and I want you to see if at least some of what I have said are true."

Josie was a black girl of about seventeen. She looked listless. Charles and Mary watched as I talked to the girl. She was a recently purchased slave and could not speak English very well. With Vilchjo's help I found that she spoke a language that we had stored in the computer. I did not speak it very well but the girl perked up immediately and smiled. She spoke very quickly. I ignored it and waited for Vilchjo's translation.

I poked around as if I knew what I was doing. The med unit gave me a long list of problems but one was that she was pregnant. The med unit thought it a good possibility that the child had a white father. I took care of what I could and in time she would return to health. This would take a while and I had to find some 'medicine' to give her so there was a reason for her to recover.

Mary had tea made and I had a cup. The two asked about Josie and I gave all the problems I could readily say I found. I left out the fetus.

When it was time to leave for the night I shook hands and said, "One of the books has something similar in it you might like to see."

Charles got a candle and came with me. "What did you wish to talk about?"

"Josie is pregnant."

Charles stopped immediately then continued. He did not seem to be perturbed. "What is wrong with that?"

"The child may have white skin or much lighter."

"You already suspect that it's mine?"

"I suspect. I do not know how your family deals with day to day matters so I figured it was better to tell you while we are alone."

"Will she be alright?"

"Yes."

"The child?"

"Sure. I told you earlier about dirty conditions causing many women and children to die. Just have the midwife clean herself and her rags not ones that look clean. You should have a healthy son or daughter."

"He or she will be a slave like Josie. I will treat the child with care but they will still be slaves."

I hated slavery but I hated this even more. The records showed that slavery at one time was indentured workers that would be released after twenty years but this stipulation went by the wayside.

The next day I visited an apothecary. He was happy to see me and asked what I wanted.

"Tell me about your business and I will pay you a shilling for your time."

"Show me the coin."

I did but did not hand it over. We talked until noon and there was little that he was able to add to what was already in the memories in the computers. I bought three dried plants as well as a mortar and pestle.

After a noon meal I went home. Mary watched me grind the ingredients and Josie took them readily. The med unit said she was already doing better.

That afternoon I went to visit my other patient and found Linda doing very well.

Molly said, "I have your breaches done apart from the final hemming."

I looked at the garment and made appreciative comments. Vilchjo gave me the information that the seat was too tight and Molly was happy to correct the matter.

"There is a machine in my country that you rock your feet back and forth on. This turns a large wheel. A leather belt turns a shaft which in turn makes many other parts move. A needle is pushed through two or more layers of cloth and a small spool of thread is pushed by the moving parts through the loop. Some metal teeth pull the fabric ahead a small amount so the needle can go through again. Every push of your foot puts a dozen stitches into your clothing."

Her eyes were big. "That's magic!"

I took out a sheet of the paper I had purchased and showed a pedal on a spinning wheel. She had not seen one like this before but it was not that much different. The reciprocating pedal though produced a rotating shaft.

This Molly agreed was not magic. Harpo had to upload the information for a sewing machine and I showed a simple mechanism.

"This looks like a clock I saw once."

"Is a clock magic?"

"No —"

"You are not sure?"

"Well the Church uses them."

"Good, this is not as complicated as a clock."

"Your machine would not be magic then."

"Good, you are taking one step at a time."

Samantha was playing with the toy I made her and completely occupied. I turned the paper over and used a pen to draw a quick picture of her. Molly remained quiet and just watched.

I handed the finished drawing to her and then did one of Robert and John playing together. On the back of the paper I drew more details about the sewing machine. Linda saw the drawings but could not see her own being drawn. On the back of her's I showed a picture of me on a hang-glider with the ground far below.

When Molly got the drawings, she was overwhelmed. "These are so beautiful and you did them so quickly."

"I thank you for the compliment but they were done hurriedly."

"They are still very beautiful. I do not know what to do with them now."

I had not thought about this either and said, "I'll look for some frames so you can hang them on the wall."

When I returned home, Josie came to me. She spoke to me in her own language. "I wanted to thank you for what you have done for me. I feel much better."

"You're welcome, Josie."

"The Master wishes you to eat with him."

"Then I'll accept. Thank you for coming to fetch me."

I cleaned up and followed Josie into the house. Charles had me sit at the table with all eight children. An older girl of fourteen looked particularly good to me and I must look good to her. I was not taken that much to not notice the way Mary and Charles stared at me.

Charles started out by saying, "Are you called Doctor in your land?"

"We do not go by titles like that."

"How do you know each person's place in society?"

"We have only one class. Everybody is in it from the man that spends his entire life in learning to a man that labours. Nobody is pretentious. We accept each other for what they are. We learn manners from an early age so people are kind to each other." I did not mention everybody's ability to feel empathy which made all of us get along.

"Even the sava — Cherokee?"

"Yes though they have problems in getting along too. The next generation would be able to have no trouble in a city like Boston. The generation after would buy and sell products to you."

"What do they have for sale?"

"There are many ingenious devices my family has been working on. You know of my family's efforts to turn hemp into thread. We will weave this into cloth. A new device made of iron will plunge a small needle through many layers of cloth and make a stitch. One seamstress can now make many more articles. Mothers in prosperous families would buy such a machine to make and repair clothing for her family."

"The — can make this device?"

"They are in training now. Some have to produce iron. Others take the iron and fashion small parts similar to a clock. Still others will assemble the machine."

"Will this machine be made available here in Boston?"

"It will but very few of the machines have been manufactured."

"Could I distribute them here?" I could feel great excitement now.

"Large scale production is years away. The machines are operated by people and they push hard to make it work. They are not like a clock that keeps on ticking away. This means you need skilled people to make the occasional repairs and to demonstrate the machines. This will be some of the natives. A white man can learn but it takes time. I foresee many uninformed people making derogatory comments."

"I see this too. What do you recommend?"

"The representative for Massachusetts will have to house and protect the natives craftsmen from abuse. This would bring down abuse on this representative too. If it were you, for instance, you may lose friends. Advertising is a way of bringing the peoples' attention to some product or service. The representative would have to sell an idea. That idea will be how the natives are responsible people and fit to go anywhere they please."

"How could I do that?"

"Start by choosing your words carefully when describing the natives. Their culture has to be seen and portions of it appreciated. Slowly the white man's view of the native has to shift. When the natives arrive they have to be seen as talented and industrious. A civilised person can settle into any other civilised society with little problem. That does not mean they will be assimilated. People have to show their own idiosyncrasies just to be a bit different."

"That may be difficult."

"It might not be as difficult as you imagine."

We talked a lot more because Charles could smell money. After the meal I was offered a brandy and a cigar. The later I refused. I smoked with the natives too much.

Charles said, "We have located perhaps twenty tons of dried hemp. Do you wish me to purchase it?"

"What is the price per ton?"

"Two shillings, six pence."

By his feelings I knew he was pushing for a better profit. "That is a little exorbitant I think."

"Would you accept two shillings per ton?"

"I would under some conditions."

"What are they?"

"I want to rent a large building to store what I purchase. The cargo may go overland so it needn't be by the dock. It could still be placed on a cargo vessel."

"I can do that."

"Fine. The hemp has to be delivered to this building for payment."

Charles weighted the situation and it looked less promising now because this would cut into his profits. Before he said anything I said, "I want a hundred tons minimum for my first shipment."

"My that is a lot. You were not jesting when you said you wished all I could get."

I only had a hundred and sixty pounds remaining and I had to budget for it. "I will accept other large buildings in different cities. The quantities have to be large enough to make the transportation profitable."

"How much hemp will you accept?"

"At the price of no more than two shillings per ton for good quality hemp, I will take a thousand tons but you will not find that much."

"That is a sizable fortune. What about next year's crop?"

"I will be harvesting my own providing I get all the seed I want. I will accept ten tons of seed if it were available. If not, I will purchase hemp next year too."

"Handling purchases of that kind requires a deposit."

"What is a fair price for the rent of a warehouse for a year?"

"Three to four pounds, I'm afraid."

"I'll pay four pounds to you and you will act as my agent. I will pay for the hemp you have located. The seed has to be stored where it will remain dry and away from vermin. Further, I will give a deposit of twenty pounds to be used towards the purchase of more hemp. I will require a key to the door."

Charles was eager now and pushed out his hand to be shaken.

"Is there anything else you wish?"

"I would like animal fat to make soap."

"We have good soap already made."

"I have tried it but I find it does not work as well as mine and it's harsh to the skin."

"How do you make yours?"

"That is a family secret."

"Everything you have is better!"

"What can I say? I sound like a fool if I boast and then not be able to prove my words."

The next day I received the breeches, shirt and jacket from Molly. So far I had not seen Roger and found he rarely came by other than to check on his sister.

With the new clothing in my pack I went to find a hat and a suitable pair of shoes. This took a while because the shoes were not made well.

Charles had recommended, George Seaforth, a barrister to me when I asked. My suit was necessary now to portray a gentleman.

Mr Seaforth said, "What can I do for you, Sir?"

I went through the pleasantries then said, "I was trained as a medical doctor in a small country south of India. I want to set up a temporary clinic here in Boston. I move back to my property in the south west. Nobody likes competition for limited resources, so I'm asking what restrictions I will have to overcome. The physicians in the city would be sure to object."

"I do not know of any restrictions. You treat people that come to you the way a barber cuts the hair of people come to him."

"Is there a medical society?"

"Those here that came from England may belong but many here in the colonies are self taught."

"That's good to know. Would you accept a retainer in case I need your services at some future date?"

"I'd be happy to do that."

The pod itself had an expanded set of instruments that were manufactured on the command vessel. I was in a much more energetic time and serious wounds were common. A doctor was also a surgeon and this required tools. To not have them would brand the person as a witch. Anaesthetics were required or the person had to be held down as they were cut and sewn. Diethyl ether was easy and cheap to make even with the tools of the time. An intermediate chemical was ethyl alcohol which was also good as a disinfectant.

The next few days had me preparing to distill alcohol this was so easy with the command vessel. Here I had to do almost everything but not producing alcohol because this was already done. My insistence that the alcohol be distilled two more times raised the price considerably. I was able to buy it by the keg.

Sulphuric acid required some sulphur, lead foil and what the English called nitre. This is what they used to make black powder.

I had to still buy my own distillation equipment. This was a copper pot, lid and tubing. Another copper tray was needed to cool the tubing so the ether would condensed.

Linda was recovering very well and I removed her cast. She was hesitant about claiming she felt good. I had to attribute this to a possibility that she may have to leave the home she was now in. Again Roger was not to be found.

Molly talked to people in need of medical attention and they came to me. They ranged in problems from dental work to diseases that were killing them. I used drugs purchased from the apothecary but it was the med unit that did most of the work. I pulled teeth and even filled a few with gold.

I was obliged to get my own place. Word of mouth was good because my patients did not get worse. Most got surprisingly better, at least surprisingly to the locals.

Money started flowing in but most of the pay was in food, wine or other products that the people produced. Molly started an open air soup kitchen for the poor after I commissioned some large pots.

The smith came through with what I wanted but he was only a day late. I was not worried because I was going to stick around a bit more.

The city fathers invited me to parties and I took the time extolling my fabricated history. I credited some natives I met with some of my discoveries.

It was at one of these parties that I met Doctor Carmichael. The man was sixty and old for this time. He quizzed me on my trade to see if I actually knew anything. I used him as a foil to expound on advances in medical science that others were not aware of yet. I asked him how he treated some people as if I were an apprentice and he liked this.

On April the tenth, just a month after coming to the city I planned on returning to the Appalachians. Charles Abercrombie had gathered at least some of what I required. One night the lifting units arrived and I had them take what was in the barn Charles had rented for me. The units had to climb to avoid being seen but had to stay low enough not to freeze. In any case they left ahead of me.

I had spent more than I had brought but the shortfall was made up from the funds I gained as a physician.

Charles did not want me to leave but I could bring nothing back unless I did it myself. For this reason, he was not averse in allowing Molly to take over the cottage providing I paid for a year ahead of time.

I found I missed Boston. It was dirty and filled with disease but the people looked more like me. I wondered again if I was inherently bias or it was something that was ingrained in our brains.

I landed at our ironworks and saw the anvils and hammers already in use. Harpo had continued to educate all who came. In this case it was a lot. Free medical treatments meant that we had lots of visitors.

There was a lot of soft wrought iron produced and thrown on the ground. This would feed the steel mill once it was built.

The command vessel was behind schedule simply because I had other equipment made. We had lost all of our major drones when we were cast back here but others had been fabricated. We could start to clean the rivers and land as well as make benasso.

Processing facilities for the hemp were only started to be erected ten days after I arrived. The hemp seed was now in seventeen square kilometres of cultivated land.

The seeds from the fresh fruit and vegetables I brought back with me was in individual clay pots. I could make a good rooting hormone but instead I had the natives harvest the tips of the willow branches and then crush them. This was mixed with water. The clusters of my seedless grapes were broken up and planted separately. They were irrigated with the water from the willow branches.

Blue Eyes was very happy to see me and showed me her now longer tongue. In the pod she showed me how it could be used to make me happy.

The new construction units continued to make the equipment to make paper. Specialised equipment had to be made to shape the benasso rolls to make them as accurate as we needed. Silicon fibres had to be added to give it tensile strength.

Steel machining tools were made with the nanobots. It would be quicker to do this now and have the natives learn the process. At some time the natives would have to take over.

The Scots came to me as a delegation of nineteen. Their spokesman was Ian Agnew. He was a man of fifty with grey hair and a knobby walking stick. He was wearing the kilt of his clan. After introductions he said, "We'd like to help if you will allow us. Our friends are learning what no man has even seen before."

"I'd like you to help but I have some concerns."

"What might they be?"

"The Scots would be an asset but they will not let their hatreds go. You would learn enough to hurt the English but I don't want this to happen just yet. The English keep slaves. This has to stop. To do this I have to attack them not you. My way is slower and there is little or no bloodshed. I have studied your history and see that you would be loyal to your clan leader but some would eventually want to kill him to take over."

"We would never do that."

"I can list many times where a clan leader was assassinated by his own people." I proceeded to do so and gave the date.

Ian said, "Some of those I am familiar with and will accept the rest if you say so. Where does this leave us?"

"My name is the same as yours. I will be the clan leader or at least the one in the new world. You swear to me and I will swear to you. Together we will fight not only the English but the French and the Spanish too."

"I will do this if you wish, though you do not look like our people."

"I have the blood of Scots in my veins. I do this only because Scots are known for having some very thick skulls. You, I am afraid, will have to knock them together for me."

"I will be your man."

"Then gather your clan and in ten days we will exchange oaths. In the meantime I will consider that you have already given it and give you some hint of what I am going to do."

We sat on the cool soil and I described a steam engine. The records stated that they were already in existence but all they did was pump water inefficiently.

Harpo came to my assistance and showed them the history of the steam engine and then what had not been built yet. These newer models were said to have been made in Mu thousands of years ago. Steam turbines were explained and then all that was done to make them the most efficient possible.

When the presentation finished I said, "I want to build some of these machines. The first will be built with my machine tools. You will be helped to copy my machine tools but in iron and steel. You will make the steam engines. When the English, French, Spanish and other men come here, they will see some sweating Scots making more of what nobody on this continent has seen before."

"This will be a lie."

"They can deduce what they want. The Scots are known for guile, bravery and being inventive."

He smiled and said, "We can do this."

"Good because some of you are going to do the same thing to make a loom."

"We have made those before."

"Let Harpo show you."

Harpo did. He started with the oldest known methods and continued until my time. He went back and concentrated on the unit I wanted built.

Ian said, "We can try, but it looks far too complicated for us."

"You will have the natives helping you as well as your sons and daughters. Women have good ideas but men keep them as baby machines and to make meals. There is now a safe place to put a daughter that wants to fight like her brothers."

"I have one like that."

"When you gather the clan, the women will swear too. The children will as well as long as they can understand at least a part of this. In return I will protect all of you." Ian had a big smile now. This was not done and a woman could starve if her husband died.

It took a month to begin to make paper. It's quality was far beyond what was available now. Machines were made to bind books but computer driven printers put the words and illustrations on the pages. The first book made was an Esperanto dictionary with the definitions in English. Ten thousand copies were made before we shifted over to a much thicker book in natural philosophy or science in English. A book on Palaeontology would be next.

I was not going to coin the new words with English roots. The readers would have to start learning Esperanto to get the ideas in the book.

The construction units had sought out gold and recovered a few hundred tonnes from near the surface. England did not want to release silver coins to the colonies because it was used in trade with China. The colonies had to find their own silver or use foreign coins. The lack of silver hampered commerce so this metal was sought. So far we had a similar mass in silver as we had in gold.

Instead of using counterfeit coins, I made coins of Mu that had Esperanto words inscribed on them. All the coins were treated to look very old.

The books now had to be disbursed so that world opinion could start to change. Some major problems had to be overcome. Distribution centres had to be set up. At some time in the future I would be attacking the major powers with words. The books would be banned and burnt. Any people that sold the books would be questioned where they got their stock. Fanatics killed, and when fanatics were shown to have false or faulty ideas, they would lash out.

I flew with Ian and Angus, his oldest son. Our trip would last a day and a half. The lifting units were much slower and they had to leave five days ahead of us.

The three of us landed in Glasgow in the early morning. We immediately found some of Ian's extended family. They fawned over Angus. I was introduced and explained away as another branch of the Stuart family that had headed to the far east hundreds of years ago. I was now a rich man with lots of Chinese gold.

I gave a good story but again it hurt to lie to people this way. I was still a physician though and I was allowed to pay back the hospitality by administering to the healthy and the sick.

We were given clothes that fit in with the locals. It was a few hours later that we purchased clothes to fit fairly wealthy businessmen.

I was introduced to other relatives of Ian's. This branch were known for being entrepreneurs. Hector Fergus was an old man but his faculties were with him.

After being introduced, he said bluntly, "You don't look like any Stuart I've ever seen or any of the other clans."

"Too much mixed blood in my veins but some of it is Stuart."

"What do you want with me?"

"I wrote thirty seven books myself and my family have an additional two hundred and seventy four. I used my family presses to bring two to print and now I want to sell the copies. Two more books were printed but as yet there are only ten copies made of each."

"What are they about?"

"The first two are a dictionary of a language you have not heard of before and then a book on natural philosophy. Many words in my language have no similar words in English. I used my word in the book and as a result the dictionary is necessary. The first book is simple but later books have difficult concepts. This is where my language needs to be understood. There is a danger to you though."

The man perked up. "How is that?"

"Later books deal with religion. I have masqueraded as a religious leader from the Church of England that written a book. I then point out the fallacies of the Catholics and each of the other Protestant religions. Other books, have me taking the opposite view."

"This would bring war on our heads. What is your gain?"

I gave my talk on religion and how man used and abused it for thousands of years. One point I had to make very clear was that humanity at this time believed every old book currently in existence was the gospel. It did not matter who wrote it. It was just one of the quirks I picked up in my studies.

This was actually the seventh book that was going to be printed. I went on about how men needed to be shaken so they could look around and see what is happening.

He said, "The English and even my own countrymen would come after me."

Ian said, "We told you ahead of time. You can ship the books out as if we are smuggling them."

"How many do you have? I need to see them."

Angus had a pack and brought out two richly bound books with gold leaf in the heavily inlayed covers. One was very thick.

"These are beautiful. Are the rest the same?"

Ian said, "The exact same."

It took the old man a while to open the cover and he was shocked again as he saw graphics in vivid colours.

We sat for half an hour with no words spoken until Hector said, "I print books too. How can you do this? The colours are so vivid. The type is extraordinarily clear. The paper is suburb. Each page is perfect and easy to read. The meanings are clear without any flowery speech. The drawings of the animals and plants are unambiguous and done by an artist as good as Da Vinci. The cover makes me want to weep. The back pages of the book has an index that makes learning easy."

Ian said, "This book is made for older children. I have seen some books with my own eyes that I cannot read even if they are in English. The book before you just gives a taste of what is available."

"I need my sons to see these books."

The men were called and we had to move to a larger room. We were offered the best Hector had to give as we waited. Hector came to our room with seven of his sons and eight grandsons. On the table was a book on fish. Each page had vivid photographs and it talked about thousands of varieties that had not even been discovered yet. All of the words were in Esperanto.

The other book was on the history of this land and explained the past rulers. It was very objective and did not pull punches. It was the only book that did not use Esperanto in it. England was more prominent but Scotland and Ireland were the next then there was the smallest section on Wales.

Whatever they were going to say was not said as the two copies were studied like holy relics.

After a half hour, Hector had to sit. He said, "Three of those books could be sold to make me very rich. How many can I have?"

I said, "We brought ten thousand of each of the first two. It will take time to print the next two."

"Ten thousand! My god you risked everything." He came to his senses and added, "After looking at the books, I know you risked nothing. Tell me what you want for them?"

I went over the books I said I had and then went on to other books that would be published later. The history book was talked about and how the English king and the nobility would not like it but they could not claim any of it was a lie.

My reasoning was explained as to how the rich would find the books truthful and informative. Slowly I would bring contentious issues to light and this would bring first one Church then all of them on us.

I countered in my question by saying, "If the knowledge of the existence of these books was common knowledge, what do you think they should sell for? The idea is to get the books accepted. I do not want you selling a few at a time for the highest price possible."

"They are so beautiful that I would say twenty pounds each. They would sell at that figure very well. The price could be lowered for each thousand books that are sold. It would hurt me grievously if the last ones did not sell for at least a guinea each."

He continued, "The dictionary is necessary to read some of the books so I can charge a guinea for it and never drop the price. It may even go up unless you provide more. Copies will be made at a third of the price but they will not look as good. That reminds me, did you copyright them?"

I shocked all of Hector's family by saying, "I want everything copied. If my books are burnt by the church then some Scotsman will just print up ten more and sell them at a fraction of the price like you said."

We came to a price that made Hector white until he heard how he did not have to pay until after he sold the books. I brought out a contract with the figures already in place. On a separate sheet of paper I penned in some additional details. A portion of the profits had to be spent in Britain to help the poor. All I had to have was the records to see that it was spent correctly.

We stayed late. The family all had to have a say in the contract because it involved too much money. I was not worried about the money at all. I just wanted the books to be studied and accepted. Money was to make sure this looked realistic.

The contract was signed by Hector and three of his sons. I then said, "There is another contract if you wish to take part."

Hector was tired but said, "What is that about?"

"I need a sneaky Scot to sell other books of mine written in Spanish, Portugese, German, and Dutch. Each one has a history book about their own culture. I can see you making a tuppence or two here."

Though he was tired, he and the family went over the contracts. They were the same as the one he had signed. The family came to a decision to branch out and accepted the terms. They would not be penalised if the books did not sell. It was what was called a win-win situation for us.

We slept in guest rooms that night. Vilchjo woke me up from a sound sleep. "Michjo, your hosts are up and eating."

"Thank you Vilchjo. Did you hear anything important to us?"

"Only that they love the books. Part of it is the colour and the photographs but also because of the textual information."

"What does Harpo think?"

"He is not sure if Mr Fergus can work within those other countries."

"I think he will do just fine. The problem may be in France and Spain. The countries are bankrupt. This was done In France by Louis XIV and then compounded a few years ago by John Law, a Scot. In Spain it was by Philip V and his wife Elizabeth trying to recover what they had to give up during the last war. There may be enough gold left in the two countries to make purchases."

I arose to find Hector already up and still excited about this venture. He would gain two fortunes from this effort. On the down side he had all the expenses and the prospect of every religious fanatic in Europe to be after him.

Hector said, "I can understand many of your ideas but I do not ken the reason for a whole book about animals long dead."

"Long dead is sometimes five hundred million years."

"Precisely. Who cares?"

"Some people used their fingers and toes to calculate when man came about. They used no facts only what they felt could not be disproved. The Egyptians went back 44 centuries when they built the great pyramid. The civilisation went much further back. If I talk about animals and it is believed then it will be harder for the various churches to make a definitive statement on the origin of man."

"Now that will cause problems but how are you going to prove this?"

"The French may have already found some of the ancient bones in chalk deposits and in the coal they use. The English and probably the Scots have found the same thing in coal and limestone."

"I have seen what I thought was a leaf in stone."

"Hector, I am going to hurt your back and make you weep."

He was taken back by this. "Why would you do that?"

"Start finding the rock and coal with the images of plants in them. Store them carefully. When the book on palaeontology is being sold, have an exhibit show all the better fossils you found. Charge the people to see what you brought. Sell the fossils you think have little worth. The people will see great value in them and embrace the book even more."

"I like that idea. How is that going to hurt me?"

"Why carrying all the gold you are going to make."

He stared at me and then saw the joke. "You can hurt me more if you wish. Will you be a partner in this with me?"

"Give what you think is my share to the poor by opening a school."

"I do that now."

"Then expand on it with what you think is just."

"You'll trust me?"

"I have to trust you. Our contract was written to protect both of us but does not cover everything. We have to have good faith in each other."

"Perhaps you have more Stuart blood than I thought."

This new idea had to be incorporated into this book but I had already printed them. A supplementary pamphlet had to be printed to go with the book. I could not stop fossil hunters but I could tell them the way they could find fossils without destroying everything they sought. They would not have modern equipment but they could use a trowel, sieve, a brush and a string grid to work logically.

During the day, Angus went and rented a shed just outside the city. It was far too small to be called a barn. It had the advantage of having the house next to it destroyed by a fire.

During the day, I met many of Ian's and possibly my ancestors though I had very little of their blood in me if any at all. Vilchjo helped me roll my 'Rs' sufficiently to sound a bit Scottish. Gaelic was spoken too and I had to reply in kind when necessary.

My supposed personal life came out as planned but I stuck to the truth as much as I could. This meant that I admitted to not being married. From then on I met many of the marriageable women. Some looked very good and seemed to like me too.

After a hearty supper the ladies found some music. We adjourned to the music room and I found an odd looking piano. One pretty woman by the name of Marta said, "We bought this instrument from an Italian merchant. It was made by a person called Bartolomeo Cristofori. We were told it was a harpsichord with soft and loud. It makes delightful sounds but it's difficult to play.

She then said, "Will ye not sing with us?

"I have heard some of those songs before. I'll gladly sing my part if I hear the song first from your lips."

Marta's skin turned red to match her hair. I felt sorry for doing this but I felt her brighten too so I was less concerned now. She sang the song beautifully while accompanied by a violin.

We both sang. I transposed my register to match hers. She liked my voice a lot it seamed and she stayed close as if to show me the music. I could detect a strong undercurrent of sexual excitement.

We sang more until I decided to take a seat at the piano. I knew the instrument fairly well but this was one of the first pianos ever made. It had two pedals and not the three I was used to. This one was not tuned that well but we could get by. It took quite a while to get used to the instrument before I could actually try to play it.

I played some of the ballads in Esperanto that had been popular before I was cast back into this time. The audience liked what they heard and apparently nobody had been able to master the piano yet.

I continued with songs from a much earlier time period where English was spoken. In fact one group of musicians were actually known as the Beatles for some odd reason. The next song was by Gershwin. Eventually I remembered songs of the period I was now in. They were in a Gaelic theme.

Ian was the one that mentioned my harmonica and I was obliged to play. This instrument was unheard of and I had to show Hector how it operated.

"This comes from my land. You have my permission to copy it all you want. You can put more rows of reeds and make the instrument longer."

"I might do just that. Will ye not play a song or two more?"

I did then we went to sleep. That night Angus disappeared and the books were placed in the shed.

The next day I went out to see the town of Glasgow. I compared the town to Boston in many ways including the price of various commodities. Most were still so highly priced that only a few could afford them.

After only a few hours I bumped into Marta and four of her friends. It took me only a second to find out that this was not an accidental meeting at all.

I greeted her and the rest warmly and she said, "And what would you be doing out at this time of the day?"

"Just thinking what I can do to improve the world."

"Do you think you can do anything?"

"I have done something already?"

She said with a smile, "And what might that be?"

"The books your uncle will sell will start to change the world. All it takes is one of the ideas to take root."

"And what type of ideas might they be?"

"You may be shocked but I could give you just one. Are you ready to risk the chance?"

"Certainly."

"Women, in my opinion, are kept as chattels by the males of almost every society on this planet. They are loved but treated as children. When they marry, any and all of their processions goes to the husband." Marta did look shocked and so did the other women. "Women are as intelligent as men and usually have the intelligence to think before reacting. One simple way to change the world would require women to be allowed to vote and to have equal say in world affairs."

Marta had not recovered. She tried to talk a few times then she said, "We are free to do what we wish."

"Are you sure?"

Certainly!" She was angry now.

"Your brother could get on a horse and ride to Edinburgh this minute if he wished."

"So?"

"What woman can do so?"

"I can go."

"Without asking permission?"

"I could be robbed."

"Your brother can be robbed."

"He's a man."

"That is what I was saying. Are you less intelligent than your brothers?"

"They went to school more."

"You're confusing the issue. They got more education. That does not make their brain work better."

I could feel her helplessness. When she could not reply, she said, "Thank you for the delightful chat Mr Stuart. Perhaps I will see you later."

"I would like to see you later if it's possible. I hope I did not offend you. If you remember, I said you may be shocked."

"Thank you Mr Stuart." She hurried off with the other women following. I guess she would not be seeking my bed tonight.

We stayed for three more days. Most of the time I just talked about future books and off the subject of my homeland. I compared how the Scots were treated by the English to how the white man in general treated the North American natives. I don't think they liked this fact being shown to them.

Our destination was not home but further east. There were other non violent ways of fighting England, France and Spain. They were the greatest offenders. This time we travelled for two full days until we landed in the highlands of India to the far east. Later this area would be north of Bangladesh and just west of Burma. The tea was grown here in the mountains and on the island we knew of as Sri Lanka. There were a great many dialects and languages in India as there were in most countries.

I was eventually able to make myself understood and I soon met a fairly wealthy merchant. He knew some English from trading with Britain but it was not much. We kept an eye out for representatives of the East India Company because of the hassles we would get from them.

As with Charles, I made a deal, mainly for black tea but I bought oolong and green tea too. There were a lot of spices for sale and they normally traded for twenty or more times their weight in gold. Silk had just come to India and we could not get any yet but might later. To harass the Europeans, I made deals for what I wanted and promised to pay more. This would ensure that the price went up.

For a bit more gold I found the names and locations of other businessmen in India. We spent three weeks gathering shipments of tea and spices before we headed for the Sichuan Basin of China. We did the same thing again. This time we got lots of silk. As an experiment I obtained the seeds for the best type of bamboo and more of the grass in the form of long poles.

All three of us were offered female slaves. When I saw just how miserable the women were, I talked to merchant I was dealing with. He in turn introduced me to the district manager of the particular area. His job was not a governor but very close.

Zu Chen was tall for a native of China but not unduly so. Vilchjo had sent some drones near the man to get some indication of what the man was like. He looked good and I went to meet him. My own reaction was favourable though he did not like foreigners.

There was a lot of information in the computers about how to act within China and very little changed here over time. I was polite and proper even for a native. I even had servants come to make me comfortable. I was dressed for the occasion in beautiful silk.

Previous to the meeting a note had been sent that would introduce me and what I would come to talk about. Chen's own servants came and assisted in preparing a snack.

At the appropriate time he said, "What can I do to assist you?"

"I wish to acquire a farm here. The air is good and the people are polite."

He nodded his head in affirmation.

I said, "I have fruit to grow that will be coveted everywhere. There is a need for workers."

"We have land that may be purchased. You can buy slaves or hire workers."

I quoted Confucius by saying, "The superior man understands righteousness; the inferior man understands profit." I paused for effect then said, "I work to find what is right and wish to train the workers so they may live virtuous lives. I would like to help the poor but not be abused."

"Those are worthy goals."

"I am trying to bring enlightenment to the world and I will not be able to be here all the time. I need a man of good character that can deal with the emperor, the army, the tax collector and the people."

"There are some good men that could do that."

"There are a few and I hope to have found one."

He knew I was talking about him. "These burdens are difficult to carry if there are other duties to perform."

"The man I have chosen is strong."

"What does this man have to do?"

"I will provide gold and this man must first buy land. More gold has to be spent to purchase more when it becomes available. Destitute women and children have to be offered work on the farm and in return they will be fed, clothed and cared for like a father cares for his children. Teachers have to be hired to teach the workers how to farm and how to read."

"Teaching the poor to read is difficult."

"You are correct. A worker that knows nothing but a hoe is not valuable to me. They have to be raised to a higher level."

"If they are fed, they will learn."

"I will ask for certain crops to be grown and harvested but food for the workers must also be gathered."

Chen nodded his head because this was obvious.

"I will come back with a new crop to plant. It will make gold for me but the gold will go to improving the farm while improving the lives of the workers."

"What is this crop?"

They had no name for pineapple so I had to describe it. They had grapes but mine had no seeds. Wheat, rice and corn were talked about but Chen did not believe how productive the Pack had made the plants.

We talked on three different occasions before Chen decided to work with and for me. I negotiated to buy a large farm in the region. The Zu Chen was in effect hired too. He would enlarge the farm for me when he could. Vilchjo gave me enough information to quote more Confucius which pleased the man immensely.

The poor, but especially the women and children, would find a home on the land. This meant they had to build homes and plant crops. I hired guards to patrol the farm for security reasons. The women and children would not be bothered by any local men or the guard detail.

I had spent much more gold than I had anticipated. In my research I found that China was the reason for the great silver shortage in Europe. They sold what the Europeans wanted but in turn wanted nothing other than precious metals. Later the English would force the right to sell opium which harmed the country and forced China to lease out Hong Cong and other areas to foreigners after a disastrous war.

China was at the same developmental stage as Europe but they did not have the great need to find labour saving devices. For this reason the industrial revolution passed them by.

Widows and their children were urged to come to my property. I hired men to assist me in building a shelter for them. The men then helped them get started.

Some of the women found me pleasing and I found them the same way. It almost felt like home the way we acted. They marvelled at the dragon on my chest and loved to caress it and the dragons penis. The dragon and I shared this organ.

One older woman was given small value coins and some gold to pay for cloth and to assist my newest family. The gold may be stolen and that was the reason it would be spread out.

It was hard to leave again but we had to go. I promised to be back once the next crop of tea and silk had been processed. This would be the same as we had done in India. Pineapples grown here would benefit China as well as providing some funds to do what was necessary. We would enlarge on the sugar cane and hemp area that was already on the farms of this area.

Again we headed east. This was the longest part of the trip and we landed in Japan for a short stop then we went to Hawaii. There were pineapple fields but they were not ripe. The Pacific was tiring but the Rockies made it worthwhile.

We flew openly to visit the natives while the tea and spices continued on its way. It was hard to meet the natives because they fled when we arrived. We could only talk to the ones that could not get away fast enough. The rest soon returned when they saw we were not a threat. I had been sick of smoking the pipe with the Cherokee but I still had to do it with the various tribes we met.

The natives here were plagued literally with diseases and most were homegrown sexually transmitted diseases. The Europeans had given smallpox, influenza, tuberculosis, measles and mumps but the natives had cheerfully given gonorrhea and syphilis back.

We got home in October of 1719. Blue Eyes was there to greet me and I greeted her just as hard. I missed her. Her tongue had grown but she had not enough time to talk very well yet. Part of the reason, I knew, would be psychological.

For the next week I greeted friends and one was Harpo. The ship was not ready yet but most of the systems were.

The crops had come in and the seeds saved. They were much more valuable than gold ever was. The hemp crop was now being converted to paper and some went to our cloth mill where it would be spun into thread. It was not nearly as fine as in my time but still very superior to anything available today.

Many of the fruits and vegetables were not tasted by the natives. The five varieties of hot peppers would top this list. Cucumbers and two varieties of tomatoes were others.

My food locker had lots of fruit. There were cherries, peaches, three kinds of apples, plums, two kinds of seedless grapes, watermelon, pineapple, pears, olives musk melon, raspberries, figs, blueberries, bananas and apricots. In citrus alone we had ruby red grapefruit and two varieties of large oranges and some very sweet lemons.

For vegetables we had beets, four types of beans plus three types of string beans. Three types of squash, celery, cauliflower, three types of lettuce, broccoli, Chinese cabbage, corn, zucchini, five hot and two sweet peppers, two tomatoes, sweet potato, three types of potato, two kinds of peas, onions garlic and eggplant. Besides the potatoes and corn, it was the wheat and rice that were the most important.

This sounded like a lot but we loved variety and we loved fresh food. A stasis unit meant there was no problems with storage. Some of our variety was attributed to gifts being pushed on us that we had not got around to eat.

The Creeks, Chickasaw and the other Cherokee were only given seeds we had more than a few of. If they made mistakes, then a whole species would not die out. They also knew to keep the seeds of similar varieties apart to prevent cross-pollination.

The tree crops would take years to mature and then we still had to keep all the seeds for many years to come.

I flew to southern Carolina where it was much warmer and purchased lots of good horses. The south of Georgia was very warm and very empty. We would farm here too until we were found or until we bought the land

We had to make large wagons that were larger and better constructed than the Conestoga Wagons that would be invented in a few years. These were flown to meet the horses. The Scots and the Cherokee now had a way of moving cargo.

We needed grain for winter and I purchased all we could. The wagons would get the food away from sight only and then the cargo would fly.

This procedure was done many times and we ended up with a great many horses.

The women prepared food but I told the men that now they had to learn something so they could show the women. I was sure they saw around my ruse but learned to make different kinds of bread including pizza dough. We did not have much cheese but we had tomatoes and good sausage.

The Appalachians had a great kind of clay that was used for making beautiful pottery. The natives and the Scots did fine work. Harpo showed them how to make a glass like composite that was difficult to break and looked translucent. I knew that this product alone would be purchased avidly in every country we offered it to. China loved pottery but now they would want this product from us.

There would only be one crop per year in this highland area but if we shifted some of the operation south or to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama or Arkansas we could get in two crops of some plants and three of the others. I wanted to plant some of the pineapple we had in stasis and then transplant the grapes we had growing in pots. Sugar cane had to be planted to satisfy the demand for sweets and this would also hurt the English trading monopoly.

The trouble was that this land was claimed by the French, while England and Spain fought over Georgia. France and especially Spain were in dire financial straights and might welcome a trade of land for a little gold. Napoleon had sold Louisiana simply because he was running out of money to continue his war.

We had lots of iron now especially since the construction units were doing this directly. Harpo had made some good steel and then taught the natives how to do it the old way.

Cast iron was made as well as cast steel. Family cook stoves and the smaller pot bellied stove were made of these materials. The trick was to get the smoke outdoors and keep the hot surfaces from burning people or burning the house down. We had no trouble cooking or staying warm. Benasso was produced and formed into large homes.

The Scots had made a milling machine and a lathe but they were very poor quality. They did work to alter the top of the stove, and make the holes and the lids. They also made frying pans that would sell very well. Pots of all kinds were made and some were just to test the abilities of the men. There were a lot of mistakes, so the pots went back into the cupola.

Our allies were given what we made and I felt like I was home once more. They were very appreciative of what we did. The natives went into homes and erected fired clay pipe that would duct the smoke from the cooking and heating fires outside. A stone wall joined with mortar would absorb the heat and keep the stove from setting fire to the homes.

Our own home was an apartment building like what I had in my time. It was a ring with a large central courtyard. We would burn wood for heat and cooking, but we would also have hot water, thanks to the copper we had formed into pipe. A septic system had to be made but in my time the waste slid through frictionless containers then down frictionless pipes. There it would collect in a container. It was encouraged to rot and in doing so generated more than enough heat to kill any disease organisms. The water had been drained away and the rest was evaporated. The residue made very good fertiliser. We would not have this for many years.

The bamboo I bought was inspected and then formed into a large kite. I was going to use the silk but the hemp we made was more than strong enough. There was lots of wind but no thermals so we did not fly.

The command vessel was nearing completion. My old crew had left with our primary means of transport just before I came to this time. It was small and suited for four people with little cargo handling capability. Since some equipment would be sitting idle while others were being used to repair the command vessel, I employed these pieces to make the small flyer.

In my world we flew everywhere on large vessels. They usually entered space to get to a destination faster. One of these was being constructed but as yet it only had the outer shell. The motors, accumulators, computer, sensors and actuators would have to wait until later. Harpo at least could work on these projects in his spare time.

The completion date for the command vessel would have been much sooner except resources were spent elsewhere. In the meantime we studied and worked while the cold wind blew outside our walls.

Music was encouraged and we formed a large community. Children were born and few infants died. Some I was sorry to say were better off that way. School was pushed harder during the cold months. Sports were not neglected because we made warm clothing for everybody so they could work or play outside. The natives and the Scots loved the sleights and it served to exercise both man and beast.

Warehouses had been built to store what we made. One was just farm equipment but that included hand tools. The wood portions were good but the metal portions were steel not wood or iron. As yet, nobody would be able to make what we did.

Another warehouse contained our cloth and our finished kitchenware. This included cast iron pipe. I did not want to let on that we had such wealth that we could use copper.

The last warehouse was our vault. It containing 417 tonnes of gold, 798 tonnes of silver, 2100 tonnes of copper, 133 tonnes of lead and 3000 tonnes of assorted metals. This was just a portion because there was a lot more deposits further afield.

School and research were in the same large building because both were related. Harpo made us some beautiful steam engines as well as some equally beautiful metal working machinery.

The men and a few women used these tools to learn. This was done by making more metal working tools. As mentioned before, the budding machinists were not doing very well.

Harpo made hundreds of treadle sewing machines. Every woman that ever sewed wanted her own. This was like it was in my culture. To get the ownership of one, they had to construct three similar units for the community. This served to get women into manufacturing and show the males that the women were just as capable.

The Scots loved the machines and proved that men could use them too. An altered construction drawing was used and a larger machine was used to sew heavy boots. So far only a few of the Scots wore the boots but the children wore them in the snow.

The education was not all aimed at technology. The trades and professions were covered or at least some of them. I wanted natives to service the sewing machines until the whites caught on. Other natives would install our kitchen appliances. Native doctors now knew far more than the white doctors though experience counted for a lot. The important addition was the drugs we made that were not available anyplace else. With a healthy dose of attitude, the natives status in society would change.

At the end of February, 1720, the command vessel lifted of the surface it had plunged into well over a year ago. Not only the community but the neighbours arrived.

There was never a need for a party but this situation was special. It was a week into March before they even started to go home. Their dogs now pulled sleds that would be wagons in the summer.

Ian, his wife Cornflower, Blue Eyes and I flew to Boston in the flyer. The old four hour trip was now less than a half hour. This time we landed near my rented cottage while it was still dark. The four of us wondered around the town admiring the sights until the town awoke.

We had tea in an ordinary that would not accept natives. Cornflower and Blue Eyes did not dress or act like any natives the proprietor had ever heard of so they were welcomed in.

Cornflower ordered in fairly good English for us and insisted on getting the best to be had. When he left she said with a worried look, "What do you think?"

"He was impressed. The British caste system allows a person acting like a lord to be treated like a lord."

At a decent hour, we walked to the rented cottage. I knocked on the door and it was Linda that opened it. When she saw my face, she jumped at me. I could feel her love but she suddenly pulled back. I held her to me a few seconds longer and released her

I said, "I missed my little girl. It looks like she's not so little any more."

She was too shy now to say anything. Molly may not be ready to receive us so I asked, "May we come in sweetie?" She backed up quickly and we came in.

The cottage was filled with people and not all of them were Molly's children. There was a man here of about forty and I had to assume the children were his. He stood up and radiated worry.

"Hi I'm Michjo. Have you heard of me?"

"I — I have, Sir. I'll get Molly."

He didn't have to because Molly came out of the other room. She looked embarrassed and I could only guess why.

"Hello Molly. You look as beautiful as always."

The feelings came from her changed radically and the blush got even deeper.

"Good morning, Sir." Now she radiated fear.

"What's wrong, Molly?"

"Nothing, Sir."

"I can see from the way you stand and the quiver in your voice, that you are afraid. What happened?"

"Nothing, Sir."

"Molly, we're friends. Tell me."

There was a lot of soul searching until she said, "Since you're back, we'll have to leave."

"I did not come back to kick you out. You can continue to live here. I just wanted to stay here for a few days until I purchased a home or bought a property so I could build one."

She brightened a little. I continued, "We can visit for a bit and then we will go. You have far too little room here. Would you be so kind as to introduce me to your guests and I will do the same?"

"Ah — this is Jacob. His wife died and the family needed shelter."

"Molly, I'm not judging you at all. You are not an old woman. You need friends. It shows that you have a warm heart."

I moved forward and extended my hand. "Hello Jacob. It's nice to meet you."

"— It's good to meet you too, Sir. Is it alright if my family stays here?"

"You can stay, but I only rent this cottage. Perhaps we can find something permanent."

He smiled now. "I thank you, My Lord and my family thanks you."

"You are welcome." I stood to one side and said, "This fine gentleman here is Ian Agnew."

Ian stepped forward and greeted Jacob and then Molly. He introduced Cornflower.

Cornflower was an obvious native but spoke fair English with a Scottish accent. She was not shy and demure but she still acted like a lady of at least middle class.

I introduced Blue Eyes and explained that she had a problem with her mouth and could not speak yet. It would not be good to have people know that her tongue had been cut out. The same was done by the whites but other whites did not see it as bad as that done by 'savages'. The origins of scalping originated in Europe not with the natives of North America.

A bit later I excused myself and went next door. Charles greeted me at the door and heartily invited me in. His eyes going over my clothing quite a few times.

"It's good to see you back Michael. Have a seat and I'll get some tea."

I spoke to the other Abercrombies at the table. After Charles prompting, I started to give lies to where I had been since we last met. This went on for five minutes until I took a paper back book out of my pocket and handed it to Charles. The paper was glossy and in full vivid colour. The articles were drawings this time so that they would not look too realistic. The wording was in English but the measurements were in metric.

Charles just stared at the catalogue cover for minutes until Mary asked what was wrong. Charles did not answer so she got up to look over his shoulder.

Thomas was the oldest Abercrombie present and I said to him, "Your father usually opens his business soon. Your employees want to get in and so do your customers."

He nodded in understanding then said, "That's right, Sir."

"He may find the catalogue too interesting to put down for a while. Perhaps you should ask him if you may open the business?"

"You may be right, Sir. What is the catalogue about? It is very colourful."

"I'm opening a few businesses here. Your father will be offered the opportunity to sell some of my cloth and a machine that will stitch it together. The remainder of the products are articles that I alone will sell."

"What kind of products, Sir?"

"An iron box that contains a fire. The smoke goes out a clay tube and not into the house. It will heat the house on far less fuel. It will bake food and cook food on its top surface. A tank holding water will absorb heat that would be wasted. The hot water will be used to wash the dishes, the clothing or the children."

"Is it better than how we cook our food?"

"Much better. In fact I see it as so good that men will cook more just for the fun of it."

He did not believe this in the least. Thomas managed to ask for the keys and then dressed to open the business.

Charles said, "This paper is — beautiful. How do you make it?"

"I'm sorry but I'm not at liberty to talk too much about this. Suffice to say that I have a much better printing process." He would understand greed so I said, "Patent protection lasts only a few years. If it's a secret then it will last much longer."

He thought again and then pointed to the picture of the sewing machine. Is this what you mentioned before?"

"That's right. This tool is complicated but I know that in years to come, it will be even more so as it is altered to sew button holes and put buttons on." Buttons had been invented but few were used. Usually something was laced up or a wood peg was put through a loop to secure some clothing.

"Do you have one that I can see?"

"Not with me but they will be here soon. I need to set up a business. It's best if this is out of town but not too far. The best way is to purchase farms so I have one large area of land."

He frowned. "Why so much?"

"I'll be building another town. The homes will be better. The streets will be better. The population will shift to my land. My town will grow much larger. I just want it built with a plan instead of haphazardly."

"There was a lot of planing made."

"Perhaps but still not enough."

I brought out a topographical map of this area and pointed to where the present buildings were. I used my finger to circle the area I wanted. "I want all of this."

"Sacred Heart! Do you know what this will cost? Once you start, the prices will go higher."

"I'm a fair man." My idea was to build a competing town and the people would move to my land and I would buy up old Boston that was not that old yet.

"Do you wish my help?"

"I do and I will pay with some contracts. By next winter you have to move to the land I purchase. My aim as I said is to shift the population."

"What about the harbour? That is the life's blood of our city."

"We will have a booming city in a short time. Now I want to introduce some friends of mine if I may?"

My companions came over and were greeted by Charles and Mary. Charles saw the natives but was thoroughly confused. His brain was getting too much conflicting data. He chose to be polite and the same was returned to him.

Charles got out his carriage and we rode to the registrar of deeds. Charles went in alone to find out who owned this property plus a lot more to throw the registrar off. Charles actions would be the talk of the town soon.

When he came out he said, "There are five landowners. Three I believe are in the city. The majority of the area is still owned by the crown."

"What do you see the land to be worth?"

"Each strip cost fifty pounds but most of that land is worthless. There is too much rock to make farming profitable."

"Let's find the owners."

We found the families by nightfall. Once their locations were known, Ian went to each farm and started to dicker for the land. He offered seventy five pounds and threatened to purchase one of the other properties if he did not buy the one owned by the family. There was lots of land in the colony and most of it was better than the land we purchased.

In three hours he owned all three though the titles were not registered yet. The other two properties were separated by crown owned land.

Charles put us up for the night and we talked business. I was learning this aspect of life but the economics that drove the world of today was far different from the economics that I had learned in my time.

The next day Ian registered the three ownerships and put down five hundred pounds down for ten of the crown owned properties. The man was stunned but did as he was paid to do.

That night the command vessel arrived and removed thousands of tonnes of soil. Benasso pipe was formed and placed in the ditches then covered back up. Footings were placed for ten buildings and three of them were going to be extremely large. Again soil was put back to hide the work.

During the night the teams of horses and the wagons arrived as did some preformed benasso blocks. It took a day until local people arrived and saw the activity. Wood and iron frames were used to unload wagons so they could fetch more supplies.

What was surprising was the fact that the natives were dressed in standard coveralls and some were giving orders to the Scots. This was all choreographed to make people stop and think. When the people spilled onto the site, Spirit Walker hustled them off politely and informed them what was happening. His English was poor but he got the main points across especially how he used the large drawing of the building for educational purposes.

One of his daughters had to come over to finish up as he ran screaming at the workers for being boneheads. Not all of this was planned and mistakes were always made.

Each large building was a hectare in size but the English only saw it as 2.471 acres. This was truly massive from their perspective. The crowds grew in size every day. We did nothing really new apart from the use of precast blocks. It was just that everything else was big and we were not shy about employing lots of labour saving devices.

Our kitchen was open and the crowds could purchase our food. The natives and the Scots talked, yelled and joked as they worked and relaxed. We tried to show a happy community that was very industrious.

The kitchen was a wonder in itself and tours were given if the visiting men or women would work to prepare food for an hour. This reminded me of the story of Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence.

Steel beams, not iron were used above all the doors and widows and again in the massive trusses that spanned the walls. There would be few supporting columns.

The city fathers came out but it was still Spirit Walker and his daughter that gave the tours. Ian acted like the second in command and always differed to Spirit Walker. This perplexed the leaders no end.

I was presently not in North America at all but in Glasgow setting up a similar operation. Hector this time was the one that found the land. Most of the property was owned by a lord and the property only rented. I had to go quite a way from the city until I found land I might be able to purchase.

Hector was very anxious to help me in any way. All his books had sold and he was making copies that sold almost as well. He had my permission to do this as long as a portion went to helping the less fortunate.

One farm was purchased and one night the house and sheds were stuffed with books. It was two weeks later that Hector was informed that the shipment had arrived. It did not take him much time to strip the place bare.

He had the book on British History, a book on fish, another on prehistoric animals and plants, and a text book on Esperanto grammar that taught an English speaking student. The fifth was the first volume of a thirty volume set of medical texts. Apart from the first and forth book, all were in Esperanto. The numbers of books had risen so there were fifty thousand volumes of each type.

He had to start on the four other major countries and here he got the same books I sold him the first time apart for the language being changed. He was not hesitant about accepting fifty thousand of each.

Hector gave me a lot of gold. I did not want the paper variety because there was a lot of counterfeit going around. I could print money too as long as the Bank of England could redeem it for gold or its own currency. This I had a plan on doing.

Hector's family were given the job of securing the land I wanted and to also purchase some land near the outskirts of London. I had to start a banking empire to manipulate the various countries. Building within the large city would be best but I wanted a large impressive building. The king could have this construction stopped if it overshadowed his home and property. This also meant I had to get written permission to build from the city fathers and other important people. This permission had to be written in contract form or I would be in court all the time.

The English king was not as powerful as his ancestors were because parliament restricted his options. He could still do a lot to harm me and my plans for the world.

I was off once more but this time to Paris. I took up residence in a posh hotel. There was a wealth of knowledge missing from our computers but I knew that French society was stratified much worse than that of England. Because of this I dressed like the aristocracy of the Kingdom of Mu. I was of course the Crown Prince of that land. Dad would not be pleased to hear his name mentioned so the king of our land was King Vilchjo III.

My clothes fit the situation but they were not what the French currently aristocracy wore. I tried to have some subtle charm to my clothing but not appear flamboyant. I still thought I looked like a fool but Vilchjo and Harpo thought I looked fine.

I began my search for links to some portions of the enlightened nobility. These people were quite prominent in history.

With a lot of questioning and a bit of silver, I learned a lot about the present political and economic situation. I was ready to arrange my first meeting. By being in the right restaurant before one particular sophisticated aristocrat arrived, allowed me to set out some bait.

During this time of the century, a movement had been started and would continue for another hundred and fifty years. It was called the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment. The proponents emphasised reason and individualism rather than tradition. It was heavily influenced by philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Newton, and its prominent exponents include Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith.

It developed from the spirit of rational enquiry of the Scientific Revolution and from political theorists of the late 17th-century Age of Reason, such as John Locke. Its leaders thought that all things could be understood or explained by reason. Their emphasis on human reason and perfectibility often brought conflict with the Church.

The man I sought was 29 years old and already famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers. This was taken for granted in modern discussions of government and it was implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He was largely responsible for the popularization of the terms feudalism and Byzantine Empire. If I could get him on my side, it would lead me closer to those that could help change the world to the better.

The Baron came in ten minutes after my meal arrived. He did not come my way. It was a waiter that saw my book on Palaeontology that brought more people around. Beneath it was a far less flamboyant book on the world economy. This was written in French but portions were in Esperanto.

It was not long after the headwaiter came over and said, "Excuse me, my Lord but the Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu invites you to dine with him if it pleases you."

I was excited and felt the urge to pee. "Is there a place to sit at his table or is it presently full?"

"Somebody will move, my Lord."

This may not be the case and I would be embarrassed. "Bring a chair for me. There looks to be room."

The waiter looked at the table and said, "At once my Lord."

I put the two books back into my attache case. This too was crafted to fit the part I was to play. I walked through the tobacco smoke filled room and stood where I wanted to sit.

"Bonjour, monsieur. I was informed that one of the regents most trusted advisors wished to speak with me."

The man smiled at the flattery. "I'm Charles-Louis de Secondat but people usually call me Montesquieu. I heard you had a most beautiful book. I would like to see it."

"That is possible but since it is a fine book, I do not wish it soiled with wine or mutton. Would you come to my table? It is less crowded, though the company may not be as convivial."

I could feel that he was used to getting his own way. "I would purchase your book. What is it's cost?"

He just inherited two fortunes so he could well afford the purchase. "A look at the book is without cost. I would even buy the wine though there is little in this establishment that is suitable. You would find the cost of the book exorbitant and I do not wish to offend anybody."

"Now you intrigue me. Show me to your table." Others wanted to come but he insisted they stay.

I went back to my table and handed the man a napkin. The French of this time were far from what they were in my time. The Baron did not like it but did not take offence. I sat and used a eight digit combination lock to open the case. I left it open to let him see what was in the case.

I took the book out and put it in his hands. Like Hector he spent a long time looking at the cover before he even cracked the book open. In a while I signalled the waiter over and secured a bottle of red wine.

The Baron finally looked at me and said, "This book is truly amazing. Where did you get it?"

"The original book is many centuries old. My father had a copy printed just for me. It was to be a bribe to get help." I smiled and the Baron smiled too.

"The words are perfectly formed. Every one is that should be the same, is. The illustrations are the best I have ever seen and I have never seen these animals before. Are they from your land?"

I smiled and said, "It would shock you, I think, but the truth is that some of these animals lived right where we are now but many millions of years ago."

In a moment he said, "How do you know what they looked like? Was it a vision?"

"Our people are scholars. They investigate our planet from all aspects. They know that beneath Paris is a large formation of chalk just as there is a similar portion just across the channel. While it was forming, animals had to have died and fell in. Their bones would have been turned to stone but they are still recognisable.

"Coal is the remains of rotting vegetation. It was formed by heat and pressure and sometimes animals fall into this while it was still just plants.

"Animals fall to the bottom of rivers and are covered in sand. Over the years, the sand is compressed into stone. If you break the stone open you can see the remains of some animals or plants."

"I would like to see some of these animals."

"They have been dead for millions of years but partial and sometimes full skeletons are found. I have seen many. Most are creatures that lived in the sea. There are so many that a few are trapped under the sand for us to find. My father has a collection that is housed in a great building just for this purpose."

"I would like to see this building. Where is it?"

"My fathers land is in the east and south of what you call India. It was once a mighty empire but the sea rolled over much of the land long ago. There is little of it left now. You may see an illustration of the building inside the front cover of the book you hold."

The Baron opened the book and looked again at the Museum the pack built in Toronto a hundred and ten years ago.

The Baron said, "I do not understand what I see."

My father's museum is three and a half kilometres long and reaches a kilometre into the air. Those small bushes are actually old trees."

"That is impossible."

"Then it is impossible. I will not argue."

"The Palace of Versailles is not that large."

"My father has many machines. They do the work of many men. This building still took two hundred and seven years to build. In some ways it is not finished. The fossils are tended by learned men that in turn teach students. Before this building was constructed my family had other less roomy buildings erected. We have been studying man, plants, animals, the planet and the stars well before your Saviour made himself known."

"Who are you?"

I had made up a new last name. "Michjo Kamolandras."

"Who is your father?"

"That would be King Vilchjo III."

"I've never heard of him."

"That is not surprising. Our population is only thirty thousand men women and children. We live a simple life and spend our time learning what we can from nature."

"I've not heard of your land either."

"Very few have. Our cities are old and each one is inhabited by far fewer people than they were made for."

"Where is your land?"

"I told you that previously. I will not be too explicit. We enjoy our privacy. Very few visitors are welcome."

"I do not believe you."

I smiled and said, "That is your prerogative, Sir. Would you like some wine?"

"Can you prove any of this?"

I reached out for the book on economics. Inside was a monochrome photograph of my father with a simple crown on his head. My mothers and siblings were there as well as me at a younger age. In the background was a large dragon that was very similar to the one on my body. The roof of a house was behind that.

"This painting is surprisingly clear."

"It is not a painting. Silver compounds are place in an emulsion on a glass sheet. Light alters some of the compounds in the pattern that was before it. From there the image is transferred to paper the way it is with type."

"I have never heard of this."

"It is not hard to learn. Many of my people have photography as a hobby."

He got off the subject by saying, "Is that your family?"

"Yes. My mother is the woman beside my father."

"What is that in the back?"

"The roof of our home. We do not live opulently. A public building is different."

"No, that thing?"

Oh, that's just Gamoise. She's a pet the family has had for the last few centuries. I'm afraid she's getting old now. She might live another hundred years but maybe not. She's one of the reason nobody bothers us."

"Why is that?"

"She flies through the rigging of a ship then lands on the mast. The ship tips, fills with water and then sinks. We used to rescue the sailors but they are so disease ridden that we leave them to the sharks. There is very little disease in out land, that is one of the reasons we chose to keep so small a population."

"That is barbaric."

I laughed openly and said, "Your generals stand on a field and order men to their deaths. Thousands die and you call us barbaric! You have cultural blindness. You do not see what is wrong with your own society."

The Baron was angry then slowly controlled himself. He was going to retort three times then relaxed. "You may be right. Tell me about your land and your people."

I paused theatrically and said, "I will do a small amount but I want you to do something for me."

"What is it you wish?"

"I'm here to view the coming revolution. I want to study the aristocracy and the powerful church members before they are swept away."

He was nervous now, "What revolution?" He already knew of what I spoke.

I picked up the other book and opened it up to a chapter specially prepared. This particular chapter was written in Esperanto. It showed a computer analysis of why the French revolution occurred in the first place. There was a lot of mathematics to back up each of the assumptions.

The book was turned around and I pointed to the first equation. "This is an equation that summarises some of the conditions that now exist. At the moment the conditions are not optimum but they approach that time."

"What is this language?"

"It's my language. It is simple and straight forward. Scholars have manufactured this language so there is little to learn after you memorise some vocabulary." I took the book back and Vilchjo and I translated what was in print into the dialect of French the Baron spoke.

"Can you prove this?"

"I could talk to your most eminent mathematicians. They could check the validity of the equations." I smiled then as if an idea came to me. "We could work together on this. I learn about your land and I will tell you something about mine. The only problem is that if the clergy and the aristocracy learn about this then they may avoid what will happen. My study will be ruined but your present society may be saved."

"Would you come to my home in the country? I can bring the scholars to you."

"I can live in the hotel and go to the scholars. They're very respected in our land."

"Have it your way then."

I told him where I was staying and started to put the books away. The Baron said, "Would you trust me to borrow these books?"

I smiled and said, "In my land we have thousands of books for every person alive. We borrow them all the time. We also forget to return them or forget who we borrowed them from. It is embarrassing for both parties if the books are asked to be returned."

"I will give them back in ten days."

"Then you may borrow them. If you wish you may have people copy them. The copies cannot be sold because my family is now trying to sell these same books to what you call the civilised world."

"I will do as you wish and copy them but the copies will be for my own enjoyment."

"Then you may borrow them. I tucked a slide rule into a pocket and I watched the Baron look at this device. He did not say anything though. I closed the case and spun the locks.

"Are those numbers on those wheels?"

"Yes, we taught the people of India how to count. The Arabs learned of this from them and brought the information to your land. Some of your people have grasped the principles very well even without further tutoring."

"Your mathematicians are good?"

"The very best in the world and have been for many thousands of years. I do not expect this to change but we would like some competition."

"Perhaps I can arrange that. Will you join me at my table. I have been ignoring my guests."

"I have a bottle of wine here so I guess I can go without looking like a beggar."

The Baron wrapped the books up and kept them safe. I was introduced to the group of sycophants. I felt their fear that their patron had found somebody more interesting.

I drank little. The talk was inane as it could be though there was some talk of both friends and enemies of the Baron.

A woman finally asked me, "What brings you to Paris?"

"There are a few reasons. One is to study the people here. The second is that I wish promote the books my father wishes to share with the world and thirdly, and providing some unpleasantness can be avoided, I want to invest some of our family's wealth. One of the books I brought talks about this topic and I wish to see how well I can do."

The Baron said, "How much do you have to invest?"

"Let's just say a great deal. If the factors effecting the equation I mentioned do not change there will only be short term investments. If the factors change significantly then longer term considerations can be made."

The Baron took me back to my hotel in his coach and said as I departed. "I would like to talk to you tomorrow. Is noon ok?"

"Let's meet at eleven. We can talk and have a businessman's lunch."

"Tomorrow then."

I went to my room preceded by a servant with a lantern. He lit the candles in the dark room and departed.

I said, "Vilchjo, what do you think of his reactions?"

"I would have to say he is showing a great deal of avarice. Before that he was worried. This may be because he believes you."

"I felt the same way."

The next day, a liveried man appeared with a letter from the Baron asking me to accompany the man to a house near the Université de Paris. I had few valuables but left my clothes in the room. Usually a guest would have guards stay with his property.

It was two hours of bone jarring pain to reach a nice home. The house was owned by Pierre Varignon. There was some information about the mathematician but most of it was on his work.

I was ushered into a large library. There I met three more professors, a boy and a man in silk robes that had to be a cleric. When introduced to them I shook hands.

Vilchjo said, "The next man is a bishop from the look of his clothes." In a few seconds this was confirmed when I met Bishop Badeau. I felt that the man wanted me to bend and kiss his ring like a cardinal. I shook his hand instead. The others present were a little shocked but said nothing.

The mens' names were not in the history we had brought back but the boy was. Alexis Claude de Clairault was only seven years old but still a prodigy.

Professor Pierre Varignon started the questions by saying, "Would you tell us about the mathematics in your book?"

"I would be glad to. I wish to make a verbal contract with all of you first. You ask me about mathematics, the equations in particular and the factors that manipulate those equations. You will not ask me anything else especially my people or the location where they may be found."

Pierre Varignon said as if it was no big deal, "That is fine with me."

"Then we can begin under that premise."

I explained the higher math as if these people were students. I was surprised to see a slate and used chalk to explain myself better. A snack was served. I ate heartily because I missed out on the noon meal.

Bishop Badeau was a soft spoken man but I was weary of him like I was of the aristocracy. He started asking questions that seemed innocent but started to border on theology. Pierre Varignon must have been intuitive enough to get the conversation shifted back to what I wanted to cover. I knew Varignon was an ordained priest as well as a mathemetician.

I asked questions of my own to ensure that the men grasped what I was saying. The bishop was lost but I continued anyway. The boy too was lost but I understood that he was here to learn.

Simple analogies were given and I showed how they could statistically make a good guess at what would happen next. I used mathematics to prove my points just so they saw cause and effect.

I was not bad in math but I had to take my cues from Vilchjo and Harpo. They monitored the men and told me who had difficulties.

It was quite late when I stopped. I was of course offered a bed and a good meal first. One of the ladies of the house offered to make sure I was safe during the night. I told her how fearful I was of the dark and she stayed.

The woman was gone when I awoke. I used the chamber pot and went down to find a meal.

It was not long after that I had to go back to teaching. All I could do was make sure they knew the mathematics I used or I would have to start all over again.

Around noon I was able to get the men to grasp the factors I was talking about but it was much later that night that they started to use some of the more difficult concepts. These men did not have my memories but they were still very intelligent.

The same lady of last night brought a friend to ease her burden. In the morning I woke up with at least one woman in my arms. When I arose, Brigitte pulled me back to bed. I was powerless to stop her.

Later she said, "You are so very much a man."

"Thank you Brigitte. The truth is that men do not try hard to please the ladies. If they learn at a young age and their friends encourage them to hone their skills then all men might do much better."

"Is that what happened to you?"

I was not the quite the fool I portrayed. What I said would find its way back to the ears of people who would pay.

"Not just me, all young men and women learn to be patient and considerate of others. Civilisation is about getting along with each other. There are very few laws needed and it is easy to know what to do. Your bible talks of the golden rule. Few people follow it like the people of my country. A citizen takes what they need from the group but works hard to give back what they can produce."

"Your country sounds marvellous. I wish I could go there."

"There may be a chance of that."

She kissed me hard. "I would go with you?"

When she pulled back, I said, "My country is small but wealthy in knowledge. That knowledge has worked to make our country wealthy in gold. There are large tracts of land in the new world. My country would purchase some and carve out a new homeland. Perhaps you would like to emigrate."

"I do not want to live in the trees. A bear might eat me."

I had to chuckle because of the face she was making. "It does not take long to build a city. Where we live now is far better than Paris. Our waste goes to a place to be changed so it will not give us disease. There is no stink like there is here. The buildings are large and the apartments spacious. Heat and light come to each room. Crime is almost unheard of. Hospitals here spread disease more than they cure. That does not happen in my country."

"How could I live in such a place?"

"Many people are farmers. They give away their food and people give them what they need to continue. Everybody works as people do here but money is not used. If somebody wants gold to fashion some jewellery they but have to ask for it.

"Two hundred years ago an English author talked of an imaginary place called Utopia. We have had such a civilisation and for much longer. Newcomers grasp and hoard what they can until they realise that it is not a dream. The important thing is to control the wild animal that lives within each of us."

"Could I fit in?"

"It's possible. Most people give back very little. Some work hard for the good of all. Many study all their lives just so they can experiment to make something better than we already have. Some go back to nature and live the way of our ancestors. They only take this way as a hobby."

"Tell me about the cities."

"An ordinary family would have a house twice this size. It would be constructed in large groups so friends could live close. Our people have very little to do. They go to market and shop for hours and have to pay for their food by talking to those that give it. I paint and play music to entertain those that worked for me. You could sing or recite poetry."

"It sounds wonderful."

"It is. Here in France, like other countries of this world, dialects are spoken. Our country has one simple language. It did not develop haphazardly but was constructed by scholars. Our musical traditions are rich, but we pride ourselves on gaining knowledge. That is true wealth."

I changed the topic because I had said what I wanted to. "Would you be so kind as to see if I could have a bath tonight?""

"I could do that if you really wish it. Are you not afraid of disease?"

"Disease is reduced by being clean. I say this on my honour. This can be proven."

"Well I will do as you wish."

"That's good because I want you to get into the bath too."

"Why would I do such a thing as that?"

"Tonight in bed I will show you. You will howl so much the house will know what is happening to you."

She had a big smile and coquettishly said, "What will happen to me?"

"You will not find out until tonight."

We went to eat my breakfast. Brigitte would not eat with me because she was a servant. I ate with her in the kitchen even if it hurt the image I was trying to foster.

I taught again and around noon Montesquieu came by and listened in. He asked questions but I felt that he had already talked to these men and he was playing an act just for me.

He said to me, "How far can your mathematics calculate what will happen?"

"The human mind is capable of surprising jumps of logic. My own people have been working on just this question for thousands of years. As yet we can only foresee great upheavals if we have time to notice the symptoms. The price of a commodity for instance can be calculated if enough historical information is gathered.

"Across the channel, there is a frenzied buying of stock in a venture to Spanish portion of the new world. I have looked at The South Sea Company for fun and see that it will destroy itself the same way John Law destroyed many French investors."

This was a shock to all the men. Some were very nervous and I had to assume theat they or their friends had invested money in this scheme.

Montesquieu said, "Tell me more on this matter."

I went on and gave what I had in the history files but I had to temper it with Vilchjo's ability to use mathematics to predict what I spoke of. This took only a short time but it took many hours to prove this mathematically. Some data had to be manufactured but if the men looked, they would find it because it simply had to exist. I used the term 'bubble' a few times to give a word that would explain what was happening.

Montesquieu stayed until late talking about market conditions and I used what I learned in university to satisfy him.

He said, "What would you invest in?"

"That talk requires a great deal of trust. I can talk of one stock and tomorrow you or your friends buy into it and the price goes up before I get a chance."

"Yes, that does take a lot of trust."

"One of the ways I might discourage the possible revolution would be to empower the Third Estate. Many good ideas originate with the common people. If I encourage them to develop then the country as a whole will benefit. I would have to find a way for the clergy and the aristocracy from not taking all the gains made."

"That could be a difficult thing to do."

"What if a group of men build and alms house? Their money was used to construct the building and purchase the land. Surely the church would see this as a partial tithe?"

"That may be possible but the clergy will cry about the money not going to the poor they support. Their poor are themselves."

"You know that I am not a Catholic?"

"I thought that. My wife is a Protestant."

"That makes for conflicts."

"Yes it does but she was very wealthy and our money keeps us safe."

I said, "Pierre Varignon helped me avoid questions relating to religion. I have yet to thank him for that."

"Bishop Badeau is more in tune with the people. I would not ask him to come if it were otherwise. He takes his faith seriously but he also has friends that are Protestants or unbelievers. If it is not prying too much will you tell me of your faith?"

"This for your ears only. If I hear of this it will have come from your lips."

"I will never speak of this to anyone on my honour."

"My country has more freedom than you can imagine. Our scholars have gathered facts for a long time. There is no proof that a god ever existed. On the other hand we have manipulated life. Gamoise did not have parents."

"Does she have a soul?"

"Our research lead us to some uncomfortable ideas. We want to live forever and to do so we invented the soul. It is a good way for a priest to gather strength and gold but it will also give solace to somebody grieving for a lost child."

Montesquieu thought about this for a few minutes and said, "I have gone over this many times. I would like to believe you but if I choose your way then I abandon any hope if you are wrong."

"That is a dilemma all of your people face. My advice is to avoid religion at all costs but keep your internal beliefs. The priests will call this sitting on the fence and say it leads to hell or purgatory. It does give your conscience a chance to find a sort of peace."

Montesquieu paused again and then said, "You should meet a friend of mine. His name is François-Marie Arouet. You would like him."

"Is he out of the Bastille yet?"

"So you know of him?"

"I do."

"He was released a few months ago."

"I have studied the enlightened movement and wish to assist if I may."

"How could you help?"

I gave a very big smile and said, "My father wishes me to bring enlightenment to all lands. The gold I make can be used to help the Third Estate. The books contain much of the proof your friends sought to prove your points."

"Can we see some of these books?"

"You saw two already. The book on Palaeontology plants the seed that the Earth was around much longer than the priests say. The fossils found will give additional proof. The book on economics allows people to see that reason permeates much more of our universe."

"How many are there?"

"Hundreds. Some are written in the major languages to get people interested. The rest are in my language. We could translate them but in reality we want our language to be accepted by the intellectuals. Latin links all countries but few speak it. The books I bring are designed to catch the eye."

"The church will ban them."

"The books that they will find less problems with will come out first. They will gradually escalate until they are all banned. By that time many places could be found to store some of these books. Some would be for sale but a library would be the best."

"The clergy will find these places. They will pay the poor to turn in their own mothers."

"Then a library of only one book at a time. If we find suitable teachers then they can carry their knowledge to those that cannot read."

"Is this what you wish?"

I said, "I want the members of the enlightenment to read more of my books. If we join forces, they take millions of my books and sell them to those that would purchase them. The gold gained would be used to educate those that cannot read. I will take nothing for the books as long as the others take only enough to meet expenses."

"Millions of books like the one of ancient animals?"

"Most are like that but some have fewer illustrations."

"The cost is more than I can imagine and I'm a rich man."

"The cost is little compared to the cost in human lives. Tyranny has to be fought."

"I can make no decisions for the rest but I am convinced."

"Then tell me where a portions of my books can be sent? Remember, the clergy and the aristocracy will remember this day and those locations."

I got seven locations because I would start seven libraries where the crowds could be controlled.

We had music in the music room and I was asked if I played. I could play them all but not very well since they were not the same as what I learned on. I did use a flute to play a few songs not yet written. Later I sang and this was appreciated even when the words were Esperanto.

I got my bath that night and had fun cleaning both women. They did not worry about disease once I started. As predicted, Brigitte howled but not as loud as Voletta. There were people outside my door listening to the women urging one another on. It was a good ten minutes later that I informed the women and they were even less inhibited when calling next time.

The two women burnt brightly but soon burnt out. I had paced myself and was comfortable.

The next day both women were in my bed when I awoke and this time I started on them. Voletta did not think it proper to do this in daylight but soon changed her mind. I had no such trouble with Brigitte.

After breakfast I showed seven different slide rules to the mathematicians. They already knew of logarithms and loved the devices. Mine had many different scales so many mathematical entities could be found directly.

Montesquieu was amazed at what I had and wanted copies made if it was alright with me.

"I want you to patent all of these and then give the rights away. This way nobody could start manufacturing them and tell you that your copies are illegal."

"I will do this immediately."

Montesquieu gave me a ride back to Paris. After we parted, I got a carriage to find a stable I could rent with me as the only tenant. This was out of town. I paid the rent that night and signed a note. A few hours later the construction drones controlled by the command vessel lowered thousands of books, three Conestoga wagons, the teams of horses, and some iron and steel equipment made at our foundry.

The books were all packaged in thin walled ceramic cases but I had lifting units to help. The horses had been kept on an island in the delta of the Seine. They were not too shaken by the short trip here as they had been when crossing the Atlantic.

The wagons were tied to each other with the carriage I came in last. I made a sight but few people saw me. I had to travel through only a few built up areas until I arrived at Montesquieu's estate. A gateman had been warned about me and opened the gates for me and just stared at the procession.

Montesquieu was dressed and waiting when I arrived. He too just stared. When I got off I shook his hands. He said, "What are these?"

"A wagon of my people. These ones are made of simple materials so they can be copied."

"They are unbelievable."

"No, what you will find as unbelievable is in the last wagon."

"What is it?"

"Let's look and see. Do we have some help? The cases are heavy."

I did not use the lift units and relied on muscle power. The cases could not be taken into the house because of the weight so they were emptied and the cases then taken in.

A large eight opening stove was taken off in many parts while smaller boxes of kitchenware were unloaded.

We used a lantern to read the instructions on how to assemble the stove. This took two hours because I did not help much. A partial chimney was put up and a fire started. Bread was already rising from last night and this went into the over large oven.

The cooks were scandalised but they did as we asked and made breakfast outside. The glass type porcelain I was going to sell was here and everybody had to admire the pieces. Ceramic eating implements came with the set. A very large glass container with a glass lid fit in the stove and cooked an equally large roast. We even had cooling racks.

Montesquieu was not monitoring the cooking but going through the books I brought. He had once written a book on the renal glands. I took out the appropriate volume and translated what was written about this topic.

"I only understood a fraction of what you said. I know you did your best too."

"I have a standard dictionary, a book on grammar and various technical dictionaries. One is on medicine that is aimed at those that speak French but the good one is in Esperanto with much better definitions."

"Are they here?"

"Not all of the technical dictionaries yet but the simpler medical one is."

I knew where it was but we hunted instead. Montesquieu went through the passage I had read to him and he painstakingly translated each of the words he had trouble with.

"This is even more amazing as I read more. Your people make mine seem like savages."

"You are still a young race. With these books, you will leap ahead at least three centuries."

"I would like to have as my dying wish that I see your father's library."

"And museums."

"Right, and the museums.

Montesquieu delivered the remainder of the books for me. His men were then sent to the stable where they retrieved the rest of the books. This was still only a fraction of the total books because we had not printed enough yet. Only some were going to go out to the public while the Enlightenment movement would be able to read some before they were distributed.

I now stayed in Montesquieu's home and enjoyed his table and surprisingly some of his servants.

The medical texts were being translated quickly but it was the books on ethics and philosophy that attracted them even more. Voltaire was quite a linguist and grasped the ideas of Esperanto very quickly. He quickly saw that the words were a mixture of European tongues.

I said, "I bring you now Esperanto. At other times my people have brought other ideas. Their work was sown on sterile ground. We thought the situation may have changed since then."

The man was 26 and nobody's fool but I sincerely hoped I fooled him. I did not have to deceive him on the work I showed him. In fact some of the ideas were his or would have been his if I had not altered history.

The man was a deist. This meant that he believed a creator made what we were and then did not interfere with mankind in any way. He was the closest I had found so far to the way of thinking we had in my time. There were naturalists around but so far none had made themselves known to me. To do so would usually end their careers if not their lives.

Voltaire would ask me the usual philosophical questions at odd times but it was Vilchjo that was quick enough to answer him. He would word a question so there was no way out. We had heard these same questions attributed to him or others. Over the years men had answered them in time for them to get uploaded to our computers.

This activity was fun as long as Vilchjo or I got a chance to ask our own questions. Vilchjo liked to talk about space flight then ask what Voltaire thought about one facet or another. Voltaire found this idea fascinating and loved the idea of terraforming Mars or Venus.

This did not stop his questioning of us by any means. Others came and tried to get the condensed versions of the books verbally and this was fun as well.

Occasionally one or another would switch back to mathematics and the group would follow. I was careful here. I did not want to give all the answers to the questions that perplexed them. I gave many solutions and the mathematical proof. In others I simply pointed the way.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Kant were babies or not born yet. I used their theories and assumptions to push the current boundaries of knowledge. I was trying to explain the nature of the state and government. Rousseau had challenged the basis of government with his declaration that "Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains". Kant, while attempting to preserve axiomic skepticism, was forced to argue that we do not see reality, nor do we speak of it, only how it appears to us.

They ate up these ideas quickly and looked for more. I gave them mathematical functions of complex variables. In geometry I gave them the convergence of series along with some proofs then boolean algebra along with noncommutative algebra. Some of the other tools not found in algebra were given then, the same was done with the quadratic reciprocity law.

I strengthened calculus by giving them the work of the Pack that had been inspired by Augustin-Louis Cauchy and Karl Weierstrass.

Trisecting of an angle was found in the 21st century but only worked in some angles. Here the pack had streamlined and improved this to where it could be done with a straight edge and a compass.

In geometry I showed them hyperbolic geometry, where uniqueness of parallels no longer holds. Then I switched to elliptic geometry where no parallel can be found and the angles in a triangle add up to more than 180°.

Group theory and a better understanding of polynomial equations was explained, then abstract algebra gave a way of studying symmetry.

Voltaire exclaimed, "Where did you come up with such beautiful ideas?"

"Mathematics is the fruit of the logical mind. I will give you two more plums."

They looked avidly and I said, "Mathematics is seen as abstract and of no particular use. This is very far from the truth. As society matures the need for mathematicians will grow. They will predict trends as I have shown you. The second plum is that you should form a society of mathematicians where ideas could be shared more readily. Make sure those of other countries are encouraged to participate. Arabs and Indians have great ideas that will push the boundaries of knowledge further back."

I added, "The great minds of today are only possible if that person is born into a wealthy family or finds such a family to help." I knew all of them had a bias against the poor. "The poor have great minds too but have no way of developing without patronage. I want a school started where bright young men and women too will have a chance to show the world what they can do."

They liked this idea after a while, especially when I talked of the library and a dean to oversee this important task.

I dropped my plan in their laps. "My country is small in size and with few citizens. I came here to purchase the absolute title to land from the French King. This would be in the New World. If this comes about my country will begin to bring the wonders of our land to this new land. Thinkers are needed and I invite all of you to join me if this comes about."

The French held a lot of land. A small portion was Quebec. Presently it was only a strip of land on both sides of the St Lawrence. The French crown also owned all of what was called Louisiana with just a few small enclaves of Spanish areas. Spain also had both east and west Florida.

I could use Quebec to choke off development of the interior of the continent until I was ready.

The regent and the young king knew from my fictitious stories that the monarchy in Mu was more of a figurehead. The king lead by example not by law. The aristocracy were those that worked hard to make the country strong and was not hereditary in the least. Anybody could lead if they had the determination, the ability and the love of mankind.

Through a barricade of officials I presented myself as Prince Michjo of Mu. As gifts, instead of jewellery and art, I gave kitchenware. There had been enough bribes paid that many people were extolling the virtues of the equipment and my person.

I portrayed myself as an intellectual that came here to negotiate some unmentioned deals and to study French culture. I was obviously wealthy and a pagan too. To the church I would be a heretic and worthy of stoning. All this from simply not having the same beliefs.

I cultivated both the church and political leaders to find out who was the best to support my cause and who would try to derail it. It was a month and a half later that I put forward my offer to Philippe II of Orléans. He was the regent during the minority of Louis XV.

During Nepoleon's time the Louisiana Purchase was completed. The land sold for 24 tonnes of gold plus a bit more to compensate the United States for the acts of piracy committed against it. This was 3,288,000 British pounds or 75,000,000 French francs. By that time France had wrested control of this land mass from the Spanish.

Men came forward to say how this was a good deal. It cost a lot to defend this territory and there was little gain from it besides lumber and furs. The cost of the latter was falling. France fought in many wars and if it had less land to defend it could win more of it's wars. A possible ally was at hand who could buffer France's possessions elsewhere from the other major powers. Another alternative was to see England fight this new power. One or both nations would be weakened and France may step in and pick up the pieces at little cost.

Somehow, I was linked to the new books that had come out. This set back my plans for criticising the clergy and the aristocracy.

There were a great many informal talks. I expressed how the people of Mu were few in number and for the most part intellectual. This made us look like easy pickings. To counteract this I spoke of talking to Spain and Philip V.

Philip was the uncle of the young Louis XV. The War of Spanish Succession had already been fought and Spain needed money too. Though France and Spain were linked by being lead by one family, they differed politically. England was the rising power and Spain the declining one.

To sweeten the deal, I offered to start a business of loaning money. Since France could borrow money, instead of selling land, I only said I would put up 250 kilograms of gold and 3,875 of silver.

Land had been earmarked previously and surreptitiously purchased. This was outside of Paris and people would have to come a long way. New horse drawn tools were used that removed great quantities of soil quickly. We went deeper than anyone else had ever done just to get a good foundation. I planned on going very high as well as having a large base. The foundations were rectangular. The longer dimension being 750 metres and the shorter one 500 metres. For now the height would be only 5 stories but it would go a 133 in time. This would be 400 metres. By comparison, the Eiffel Tower had been only 300 metres high.

My wagons were constructed from parts made in North America. Cut stone came by on large barges. The concrete that went in was changed by construction drones at night to benasso. The stone was put outside of the building for ornamentation only.

The labourers were hired and trained. Those that showed no inclination to learn were released. This was hard to do but necessary for progress. They would hurt a lot more when the rulers of France had to come down at least one notch.

In North America, a wooden hulled ship a 170 metres long and 30 wide was being built by Harpo. This was to showoff some of the technology of Mu without being too blatant. The limiting factor was actually the strength of the wood. It was going to be powered by a steam engine. The deck would have one large and two small cannon pointing forward and a much smaller pair facing the other three directions. Black powder would be the propellant to keep some dangerous technology from leaking out.

I went to parties and hosted my own in the homes of friends. The iron products sold very well. Part of this effort came from introducing new food. They liked pizza and could make it themselves because tomatoes were available though some thought them poisonous.

My hemp cloth brought an instant sensation in Britain and France. Some of the more mechanical minded free thinkers made devices that showed gears and cams. This allowed me to introduce the treadle sewing machine so it would not be seen as witchcraft. It sold at exorbitant prices. In fact everything was expensive just to drain the money from the economy.

I carried the cloth, sewing machines, seeds, pineapple and grapes along with my ceramic china to the east. The Indians traders loved everything I had but I purposely only sold some. The rest went to my property in China. The products were raved about and I could see that these products would be accepted for trade in this country.

There was bamboo but I had not planed the seeds I already owned yet. I needed to own the land or at least avoid notice of the developed countries that claimed where I did operate out of.

The farm had greatly increased in size and needed more and better equipment to make it more prosperous. The population on the farm had grown dangerously high and I spent money to feed those that were here now.

In Boston, the large warehouse was completed. Once it was dried properly, we would stock it with what we could make. Charles built another business to be near us. In time he would shift over and the people would follow.

A building was being erected outside of London and it was slated to be as large as the one in Paris but as yet nobody knew the details.

I fabricated evidence so the French spies in England learned of a new English initiative to attack the French. A similar approach was done in Paris. It was all a sham but I wanted the rulers edgy.

To reinforce this ploy I contracted for twenty large ships in England to be built. My name was not linked to them and the vessels looked like they could be used as warships by the English admiralty.

The English learned, through a wily Scot, of a way of making cannon in an improved way and a Scot got a contract to build some. Some of the successes in this project would worry their neighbours.

It was in the summer of 1721 that I got my first nibble that the king and regent were interested in my offer. I had drones monitoring them as well as the influential people that had their ear.

Many people came to me for bribes on how they were going to help or hinder my aspirations. I was not good at intrigue but Harpo was. He played our enemies off against each other that would make the Borgias proud.

I was summoned to see Philippe II of Orléans. I did not have to cool my heals at all which was odd. He and Louis XV sat in their respective chairs but it was Orléans that said, "What will you really offer us for our lands in the new world?"

"Are you talking about all the land that France claims in the New World?"

"No, what you originally asked for."

"What if I also offered you 500 tonnes of pure refined sugar a year for the next fifty years to get all of what France claims?

"How can you offer that? You have no plantations?"

"If I get the islands, I will. We also grow sugar cane in the east."

"I was told there was no large islands in that area."

"We have agreements with China and India. We give them advice on their crops and they help feed our nation."

He did not like this answer because he wanted to wring more from me. "Your offer of 75,000,000 francs is far too low even for the balance of the land."

"You must have a counter offer?"

"Yes we do. We give you a strip of land north of the English lands and along the Saint Lawrence River."

This was a tiny fraction of what I was after. The bargaining went on and on. I pointedly asked for a seat and one was reluctantly granted. I went over all the points that would benefit France if they sold me the land. I then mentioned how my cloth and manufactured goods would cut into the trade France enjoyed with its colonies.

Nothing was resolved but I knew they were interested.

I set aside two weeks to visit China and India. The crops I wanted, had been gathered to a few locations for easy shipment. There was a lot more than what I expected even with the premium I promised for my purchases. I simply bought more storage areas and then had to pay for a lot of protection because I had to take possession of what I bought.

The population on the farm had grown and I had to find ways of discouraging more people from coming without looking bad.

Zu Chen worked for me on the side and I tried to keep him happy. I proposed a shipping canal for the area that would also provide irrigation water. This had been tried in the past and failed. The Pack had done it in the future and it had worked beautifully. In fact, my family had done much of the work.

Chen was given a gift of a set of ceramic/glass plates. Each one was the same with a beautiful scene but the picture of an old man off to one side was painting a haiku. The detail was clear enough that 'good luck', 'long life', 'prosperity', 'respect' and other meaningful terms to the Chinese were visible though the graphic was small.

The servants set the ceramic trunk on the floor at my feet and all of them departed. The trunk was a work of art in itself.

The man admired the trunk but before he could make a comment, I passed him a sheet of paper with ten characters on it.

"What is this for?"

"Find the words on the trunk and press them in order."

He looked at me but did as he was asked. When the last character was pressed, a noise was heard and the trunk opened a few millimetres. Chen looked at me and it was my turn to nod. He opened the trunk to find the plates, bowls, cutlery and the cloth.

Chen spent ten minutes examining everything especially after I gave him a magnifying glass. This too amazed him though they were available at this time.

"These are gifts worth of the emperor."

"They are simply gifts to a virtuous man."

We sat and talked. I explained what I could about the trunk. The Chinese were already masters of this sort of thing. We talked about the contents of the trunk but he did not learn enough to duplicate anything. I wanted to bring the balance of payments back into order first.

The pineapple crop originally took three years before the fruit could be harvested. The Pack had modified the plant so it took only one year to mature but the plant then used the existing root structure to grow another fruit every year after that. Usually they were dug up and moved or just a portion of the roots or the stems would grow a new plant. The fruit was much larger and much sweeter, they even lasted longer in storage.

The wheat, rice and corn crop had come in but we had so few seeds to spare that these had to be replanted.

Chen gathered a lot of hemp for me as well as sugarcane. I showed him how to purify the sugar much more so it was white not brown in colour. Sugar cane matured at different times so a processing plant could work most of the year with the remainder of the time devoted to maintenance.

I was going to set up a distillery here to compete against Europe and possibly fill a need within this area. The idea of selling this drug did not bother me much since we had used it in my time but then again there was no genetic problems that lead to alcoholism.

The ladies that had pleased me and in turn been pleased were still in the house. They now had a problem because I had brought books back that would allow them to learn Esperanto. I lied the best I could and had them think they would go out and live with the rest of the workers if they did not try diligently to learn. I was not about to let them be taught by a computer and a hologram just yet.

Vilchjo informed me one night when I was enjoying myself with the ladies, "Michjo, a British column is marching into the mountains of North America and approaching your home there."

"I guess our other visitors could not remain quiet."

"Apparently not. They will arrive in a day."

I had to give my apologies to the ladies. They were disappointed but still bathed me. Within an hour I was dressed. Usually I rode a horse to the southwest. I owned an additional small farm here and the family tended the animal for me. This gave me access to a forested area where I could disappear when needed. It was dark now so the small ship came to me and I was soon streaking north, though from where I was it did not make much difference where I went.

The trip still took three hours and I spent the time thinking on the problem. The Spanish had been fought by the English and chased out of what would be Georgia. The English had placed the Yamasee there to keep away everybody else. The Yamasee went to war with the English instead and for two years killed the English settlers. When the war ended, the Yamasee were driven south to Florida.

The Spanish and the English claimed Georgia but nobody was here now and they would stay near the coast to use ocean vessels. That was why I had started negotiations with the Spanish throne.

I communicated with Harpo and the humans and none of them saw any problems. A satellite had been monitoring the group since they got off their ship in what would soon be Savannah. It was only recently that the dialogue was heard that confirmed where they were heading.

The secret had to come out sometime. We had a few white visitors in the last year. Most had heard of us from a native that could not keep quiet but some people stumbled upon us. There were a lot of natives that came as well as runaway slaves. The slaves stayed but would hide when and if the whites came.

The visitors never believed what they saw. The buildings were large but most were for storage or to contain some manufacturing concern. The kites had flown all summer but when a stranger came, they were put into a hangar.

The Cherokee village I originally was welcomed into was picture perfect. The homes were spread out to be nearer the fields. They were large and airy. Trees grew among them. A canal bisected the community. An artificial lake provided irrigation and leisure activities. Public buildings allowed for year-round group activities including a swimming pool, a large sauna and a gymnasium.

A hospital had been built and now the natives came there first to be treated. Native doctors and nurses were overseen by Harpo. The village was the way some of the back to nature people lived in my time.

After I landed, Blue Eyes ran to me and I kissed her gently. A large group of children did the same thing. I could not feel fear but more a bit of concern and excitement.

Blue Eyes paused to get ready then spoke. "What do you want to do Michjo?"

Her tongue had regrown and it was difficult to get her to talk correctly when she was excited. She also spoke Esperanto very well.

"Harpo says he heard them talking about flying people."

Her concern got higher. "It had to happen sooner or later."

"I'd like another few years to pass but this area is a backwater. It will take time to inform the colonies and even longer for the news to reach England."

"They won't attack?"

"They will send ambassadors. They will want to see what we are and what we have before trying something."

We went inside the gymnasium at the foundry and watched the large screen showing the image of the troops. The image came from the satellite and from two drones that had reached the group of men. There were 83 total and 13 of them were officers. They were accompanied by seven natives that looked to be Choctaws to me. Their faces were not familiar to anybody in the gym.

We had time to get prepared and still renew acquaintances. From the talk of Captain Marshal Fustian we learned that the force was going to see Spirit Walker first. He had been warned too and was watching their own view of the people approaching them.

The men arrived at the outskirts of the village or rather town. The natives waved but most continued to work. A team of horses were pulling a plough through the soil in preparation for planting late wheat.

Captain Marshal Fustian along with the officers rode horses. All of them went across the newly ploughed field on their horses. The Captain said, "Where is your village?"

The native was an older man and quite proud. "Follow the road you were on to the east."

"What do you do here?"

"A blind man can see that I am tilling the land in preparation for planting."

"None of your backtalk or I will give you a backhand!"

"As I understand it, that is against the law even in England. What makes you think you can commit crimes here and get away with it?"

The man was now angry and moved to hit the old man and he stood and waited. The captain was committed now and struck the man. He looked at the man as he arose with blood at his mouth.

The men on horseback rode back to their troop and headed east. They rode by the homes and the Choctaw were ahead looking for an ambush. The natives went even slower as they entered the town. The Cherokee were not dressed the way they usually were. The children wore a shiny one-piece garment and the adults had shirts with the images of flowers or animals on them. What I think rattled them the most was the way the Choctaw were ignored.

One ran back and the troop advanced. The roadway to the town as well as all the streets was made of benasso. There were sidewalks of the same material. Each house was surrounded by lush grass that was neatly trimmed. Flowers grew around the houses and there were gardens in the back.

The captain pulled up to a child and a mother and said, "Where is your chief?"

The woman turned around and said in Esperanto, "What does this man want?"

The neighbours could not answer her. The Captain directed the Choctaw to ask in his language and the native said, "Where is your chief?"

"Who asks this? I walk down the street and get stoped by some dirty and smelly foreigners."

"He is a great chief of the King of all whites."

"I thought the Choctaw were honourable men. Why do you lie to me. Are you afraid my daughter will go to you and kick you in the leg?"

"Don't talk to me like that, woman. I'm a warrior."

"You are a Choctaw man taking money from the whites. Give me the truth."

The Captain bellowed, "What did she say?"

"She wants to know who you were."

"Did you tell her?"

"Yes."

"If she doesn't answer then slap her. I'm not going to stand much of this any longer."

Spirit Walker was walking down the street with a grandchild and said loudly in English. "You break our laws? You are supposed to represent your king and you drag him through the sewers with you by your actions. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Who are you?"

"You come to my town and you say who you are first. I see the quality of his majesty's officers has dropped significantly. What will you do next, threaten infants that cannot speak?"

"I'll speak any way I chose."

"Then you are a fool. Leave our town and don't return."

"I will not. I'm placing you under arrest."

"Under what charge?"

"Anything I want."

I had heard and seen everything. From the other side of town a six metre long armoured car raced down the street with an alarm. The boilers had been hot for hours. The car raced at the officers and the horses went crazy trying to get away.

The car screeched to a stop on rubber tires. The regulars did not know what to do and some ran. From out of the car jumped ten men wearing vests designed to stop bullets. They were similar to what was once called a SWAT team.

The men managed to get to the Captain before he gained his feet. Two of the officers were able to stand. The police spoke English and told the men to raise their hands. They did not and the two were subdued with a shot of mace.

The Captain screamed to be released but steel manacles were put on him. The officers were dragged to the armoured car and searched.

The double barrelled machine gun on the top of the car tracked the soldiers. Some came charging back trying to rescue their officers. Those that came with bayonets on their rifles were shot to wound.

It was Ian that roared with his Scots accent, "Stop you fools. I'd love to play with you but there are children about." When this did not work concussion grenades were thrown. Only two muskets had fired but nobody was shot.

The soldiers were bound and so were three natives. The rest had not participated.

Spirit Walker walked over to one of the Choctaw and said, "Greetings brother. Are we at war?"

The man thought for a minute and said, "What did you do?"

"Are we at war?"

Finally the man said, "Not unless you kill the red coat."

"We will not kill him. We are not fighting the Choctaw. You may visit the town but think of our rules before you do anything."

The men were bandaged. Some were in bad shape and were rushed off to the hospital and a med unit was working on each. We did not want any deaths.

The rest of the men were herded to the gym and ordered to strip. The ten men with the odd clothing along with hundreds of other men got the Brits to do what they were told.

A moment later the first twenty were pushed towards a communal shower. Their manacles were removed and they were shown how to shower. It was Ian's job to yell and scream at them like their sergeant to get them to understand to clean themselves.

It was many hours later when the men and the three natives were dressed in shiny coveralls like the children. They sat in a group on the floor of the gym as the four other Choctaw looked on.

The officers though were in a jail that was specially made for them. I had not thought that this would resort to violence, I was just prepared in case it did.

The free Choctaw found a delegation of their own people here to explain the facts of life to them. Spirit Walker was doing the same thing to the troops. Ian came across as Spirit Walker's second in command.

The troops did not understand what happened or why. They figured they could do what they wished or at least the officers could.

A hastily fabricated courtroom was set up and ten jurors found. The captain was charged with twelve crimes including hitting Little Bear.

The troops were in the gallery and listened to their officer rant and rave and even call on his men to save him from the savages.

Spirit Walker theatrically put a white wig on his head and smiled as he took the bench.

The bailiff had to use a stun baton on him five times until he stopped. It took that many because the charge was kept low.

Little Bear and then Daisy gave their testimony. The officers had to take the stand and swore on the bible. They gave their names for the record and said what happened. We had copies of the English Common Law and the military law the troops had to follow. Excerpts were read out to describe what laws had been breached.

The Captain had settled down and tried to defend himself but Ian was the Crown Attorney and cross-examined him on his duties to all civilians. The rest of the officers were dealt with a lot quicker.

The jury was composed of five Cherokee, four Choctaw and one Scot. They found the defendants guilty. Spirit Walker handed down his sentences. Captain Marshal Fustian was lead away and placed in the hastily made stocks. The soldiers were lead out into the countryside to dig the ditches and load the wheelbarrows with the soil they extracted. The enlisted man were shown how to clean their clothes and told to take another shower after the garments were done.

The three arrested Choctaw were laughed at by their four friends. All of the visitors were told how to use the facilities or face a night in the stocks.

Before the sun went down, three kites flew in with two native boys and a native girl. They landed before the startled men and the adults told them to put their toys away for the night. The children were primed for this and whined until they were told more firmly.

The soldiers that escaped to the trees were found. They got to see their friends free and eventually surrendered.

Spirit Walker, Deer, Ian and Cornflower sat at a table in the gym. Many in the town were at other tables and there was room for the soldiers. The officers were led in and shown how to have a shower. When they came out, they sat with the rest. Spirit Walker spoke of their great spirit for a few minutes and they then began to eat.

During the meal, the leaders of the town talked loud enough for the soldiers to hear. Later, Ian gave a speech telling the soldiery about the town. He then talked about civilisation and the savages that attacked it. This he said as he looked at the officers.

The meal itself was sumptuous but they tried to show that this was the usual fare. After the meal, the town had a music festival and some of the soldiers were encouraged to participate.

That night the soldiers were billeted in the gym and guards stood in rotation to make sure they stayed.

The next morning the men were cruelly told to take a shower and report for breakfast. It went faster this time but not much. The captain had been fed and given water but he had soiled himself. In Britain the children threw refuse at a person in his position but that did not happen here.

That morning the Captain was allowed to wash and change then eat before going back to his place. The officers continued to clean ditches but the others got to see children flying. They had a trip to the hospital to find their injured compatriots being cared for by white smocked natives with old fashioned stethoscopes casually placed around their necks.

Later they got to see the compressed air powered machine guns. These were far more accurate and far more powerful than a musket. When it had been used on the soldiers, the power had been reduced considerably. The armoured car was shown and the sergeants were asked to shoot the car and were amazed that hardly any mark was seen on the armour. The steam engine was shown and marvelled at.

Later that afternoon, Captain Marshal Fustian was taken from the stocks and allowed to clean himself. Instead of going back to the public square, he was led to the library we set up for Spirit Walker.

When the captain was led in, Spirit Walker said, "Have a seat, Captain."

It took a while but the man sat.

Spirit Walker said, "I am sorry for what happened to you. You came upon a situation you were not prepared for. I do not actually blame you that much but it's your society. They pick and choose what laws to follow and don't mind trampling on the rights of those they think are inferior. Your actions may be permissible if you were at war in a hostile area but not here. You saw no weapons until you threatened the safety of our town."

The captain said, "What you did was against the law. I will report it and an army will come here to make it right."

"So you did not learn. That's too bad. Going to war against this town is the same as going to war against the Cherokee nation. We have treaties with the Chickasaw, the Choctaw and the Creeks. To fight one is to fight all. It's too bad, you did not get to see the demonstration of our weapons. To fight us is to die."

"You use witchcraft."

"Then you are a bigger fool than I thought. You remind me of a native that came out of the forest and saw your musket for the first time. He would say it's witchcraft."

The captain sneered but then again there was little he could do.

Spirit Walker said, "Well get up, I'll give you a private demonstration."

Spirit Walker took a rifle and found some lead slugs and then some targets. He then found one of his grandchildren and they went out. The Captain inspected the targets but would not touch them. The child ran off and placed the targets where Spirit Walker wanted them.

Spirit Walker pumped his rifle for five minutes to get the required pressure. He then looked through the telescopic sight and fired twenty times before he stopped. The two men walked to the targets. They were not all in the centre but they were close. The back of the targets had thick wood and it was now destroyed as the lead projectiles went through it.

"Not bad for an old man. I don't wear spectacles either!"

I was only observing what was happening and I knew Ian gave an order and some children jumped off a high building and then soared into the sky until they caught the hot air from the foundry and they rose very quickly.

A few minutes the children were seen by Spirit Walker and then the captain. When Spirit Walker waved, the children turned a lazy circle and buzzed the two then left again.

"One of those is my granddaughter. Pretty good, don't you think?"

"Witchcraft!"

"Not at all. It's a wood frame with a silk covering. The silk is very strong. The weave is close enough to hold the air. In a way it's the same as walking. That is a controlled fall and you recover each step only to do it again."

The captain was not listening.

We had been discussing what to do for quite a while and the Captain's intransigence bothered me.

The captain was taken to the officers and given a shovel. When he refused, he was put back in the stocks.

The next morning Spirit Walker told the officers, "You don't have to shovel any more. You do have to stay a few more days then you can leave. If some of you want to stay, then think carefully about it then say something to one of us. This would be desertion and if you were caught, you would be executed even if you are not at war. Fustian is not that sane."

Tours of the village were now given the officers and they got to see the facilities.

I made a report of what happened giving names but not my own. The trial was covered in detail so every word mentioned was written down. I added what was said to Captain Marshal Fustian and his reaction. A dozen men of the village signed the document including Ian.

I flew Ian to Raleigh where he paid a boy to run the message to the man in charge of the post. This act was covered in the document because Ian would be arrested first. At least when Fustian returned, there would be more evidence than his comments.

The construction drones were half way to China. I stayed to see what happened. The soldiers were escorted out of our land with only three rifles. The rest would be found at their small base in Savannah when they got there.

A few days later I saw that the cargos from India and China sent home. I had to go back to Paris even though I knew I should be doing something else.



-------

Chapter 4


Instead of Paris, I went to Madrid with the same gifts I had given the regent. The French upper crust looked out for themselves but the Spanish were only different in that they tried to think of honour more. This was just a sop to the way they killed people.

The number of the Enlightened aristocracy was a lot lower than in France. I saw this as their rigid social structure. There were some though as well as a few of my French friends.

Philip V was 38 now and his wife of 8 years was a decade younger. The male half of the family was a manic depressant. The female portion, Elizabeth Farnese dominated her husband and pushed him into costly wars. The Treaty of Utrecht after the War of the Spanish Succession saw Spain loose lots of its territories. Wars would be fought in a futile attempt to get this land back.

Money, or rather gold and silver could be offered to get the land I wanted, but I was sure that it would not be enough. On top of that, they may make a deal then a few years later attack to take it back.

Another incentive to garner this land was to trade. Silks, tea, sugar, spices and coffee would not be enough. What would inspire them was my weapons but that meant deaths and they would be on my hands.

The wooden ship was complete. If I stripped the cannon, I would be selling a freighter that was far larger then anything in existence today. I also had the twenty ships now being built in England. Again, without guns, they were merchant ships.

Cardinal Alberoni had been behind the schemes to recover the lands once held by Spain. He assisted the Scots to rebel against England and fermented many wars that were not well thought out. The man was blamed for the loses and expelled from Spain. These small wars along with the War of the Spanish Succession bankrupted the country.

I procured a costly audience to see Elizabeth Farnese, the consort to Philip.

The woman was attractive and she immediately found me the same way.

Her people had appraised her of my particulars and she said, "Prince Michjo."

I knelt and kissed her hand which was the custom. My tongue touched her fingers too and I could feel that she felt this. I kept my position and greeted her the way she wanted.

She got me to stand and said, "Are all the people of your land so fair?"

"I am but average. Good breeding tends to make this happen. We have been doing this for many thousands of years. I can see that your ancestors have worked to the same ends."

"Why thank you."

We talked for a long time about inconsequentials and I did not try to push my agenda in any way as if happy to be in her company. Near the end of my appointed time she said, "What is it that brings you here?"

"I told you about my country being small. We would purchase land and gain all titles for it. Spain has land that might be for sale."

"How much are you looking for?"

I pulled out my attache case and presented her with an outline map showing the world much better than any of her cartographers had shown. On it were only two colours. One was all the lands Spain claimed and a green colour which was the land I wished to purchase. This was not all together but comprised both Floridas, the disputed land of Georgia and all the land west of the French owned Louisiana. There was unclaimed land in the American north west and what would one day be Alaska. I was planting benasso monoliths to show that it was owned by Mu.

She stared at it for a minute but she was thinking very hard. "This is a very large area. We could not possibly sell all this."

"The land is large but so is my offer, in fact it is overly large."

"What do you offer?"

"Thirty two tonnes of the purest gold or up to a third of that value in silver when it exchanges at fifteen to one for the gold."

"Few men talk of tonnes of gold."

"It is easier that way and my tonne is the real tonne of a thousand kilograms and not the English ton."

"Does your tiny country have that much?"

"We do. We have aided China and India for thousands of years. We took little in trade, the same way China now trades with you."

"I will have to talk to my husband about this."

"I thank you and for doing such a service, I have brought a gift from my country."

"Why thank you."

"It is rather large, so it has to come by carriage. May I deliver it to you in the next few days?"

"You may."

"When would be convenient? There are secrets needed to open the chests."

"Secrets?"

I smiled. "Why of course. It makes the gift even nicer."

I waited two days then had three local wagons bring three of my ceramic chests. The consort was not around to receive them so I put them in the hands of an official and left. Nobody could open the chests unless they used a lot of force and this would destroy the contents.

It was four days later that a messenger found me and gave me an invitation to a party. Perhaps they wanted the combinations to open the chests.

I accepted and an hour after the appointed time, I arrived in a rental carriage. The party was in full swing. It was no different than the ones in Paris except less French was spoken here.

My clothing set me apart from the rest and this is what I sought. A foreign prince could dress in the clothes of his country.

There were people here that I knew from Paris. I was introduced to their friends here. I had learned some of the news from Madrid but not nearly enough to comment much.

When an opportunity arose. I talked of the Suez canal that I wished to build. The Persians and the Romans had worked on this but with little success. To add to this I talked of the Panama canal that I would build that would allow Spanish ships to the Pacific but restrict all other nations but my own.

Both of these proposals had been researched for a long time but they were too difficult for present technology.

I was asked how I was going to do it but I relied on new horse drawn tools and a lot of hired help. Some of the people that had seen my construction in Paris assisted me in getting them to believe.

On man asked me about financing. I said in reply, "My country can handle this though it will do much to deplete our funds." Basically I was saying that I did not want partners.

Another asked how the Suez passage would be made. My method was not going to be the way it had been done. I would have wide canals with parallel locks to keep the waters of the Red Sea from flowing into the Mediterranean. At the end would be numerous locks to handle many ships.

The same was asked of the Panama but here it was going to be the way the Pack altered it. There would be one strait channel that would be extremely costly before the Pack invented the construction drones.

To hide my ambitions, I talked about locks leading to the lakes on the interior of the isthmus.

I had come prepared and brought out the same map I had given Elizabeth Farnese. A smaller detail map showed the original Panama Canal. Naturally to cost came up and I simply said, "Seventy thousand workers and fifteen thousand kilograms of gold."

There was silence then.

They started to talk about the Suez when a messenger asked me to follow. I soon met Philip and his wife Elizabeth. I had to go through the usual protocol that embarrassed me but it was something I had to do.

Philip got down to business and said, "I hear you want a canal across that neck of land?"

"I would, if I owned land on the pacific side. Otherwise the cost is too high to even attempt it. The canal would also allow an alternate route to the east. Going around Africa takes a long time and so does navigating the narrow channels leading to India."

"Your other canal through Egypt would cut this time down."

"It would but the cost will be high and the cost of passage would be high too. Transshipping across the desert and into the Red Sea is expensive."

"Are you looking for gold?"

"I have the necessary funds for these projects."

"And pay the price you offered for my land?"

"Yes."

"Your country is extremely rich."

"We are not rich in land."

"Perhaps we can talk on this matter? I would like to have these canals built."

"This is possible but you have no idea of the costs you are facing."

"Those areas look so narrow on the map."

We went to a large room with a few ministers and the royal couple. This time I was offered a seat and I took it.

Philip said, "Are the chests you sent us magical?"

"Not in the least. They are like the Chinese puzzles. I was going to explain the secrets when I delivered the trunks but it would not be a secret if I had to give it to a servant."

Elizabeth sat straighter and said, "I was detained."

"You are a lot more busy here than I am in Mu. There I have only social engagements until I was tasked to come to Europe."

Elizabeth said, "What did you come to accomplish?"

"My people have tried to educate the people of this world many times but those enlightened times died out and our improvements were for naught. Europe now seems to be going through a time when old values are questioned and research into the unknown is pursued. Perhaps our seeds might flourish for all mankind."

"You came to teach?"

"That and acquire a new homeland. When my father leaves I want a vibrant land to reign over. Mu is small and confining but still gratifying."

"Where is your land?"

"I will only say it is south of India. We kill an inordinate number of freebooters each year. They know of our gold and want it for themselves."

Philip said, "Why do you want the land you have marked out in green?"

"It is my second choice. I was in Paris negotiating for land that they claim in the New World."

This made the two bristle because of their problems there. "What did you offer them?"

"I think that is a private matter."

Philip didn't like being thwarted I saw. "Your offer for this land is a joke. It's very rich."

"My people have investigated this land. Some is as you say but lots of it is desert, more is just trees and rocks. Good farmland is only in some portions. The coast is wet but too wet. Farms would be flooded periodically."

He knew I was downplaying the land and he pointed out large areas of good land. I countered with periodic droughts that would kill a farm.

We did not get far in the negotiations but it was a start.

Elizabeth asked, "Will you open your gifts?"

"Certainly but if you trust me, why not do this with just the three of us? You can be the only ones that can open the chests."

Philip liked the idea and everybody was expelled. I took out three sheets of paper and handed them to Philip.

I said, "It does not happen in my land but I have heard about servants and others listening to the door or walls. Let me explain this with a pen."

I pointed to a chest and wrote down how this particular one was different from the rest then I did the others. With one of the sheets of paper I had given them, I pointed at the glyph and then at the appropriate one on the box. I worked slow and the first box opened a bit. Philip did the next two before we lifted the lid on the first.

We spent the next few hours going through the contents. The translucent porcelain had to come in settings of a hundred and this meant a lot pieces. The cloth was marvelled at because of its strength, texture and the fineness.

The books though caught their eyes much quicker because of the colour. They were simply enthralled with the artwork and the photographs. The technical books were not well represented but the medical ones were.

Philip said, "This book is about the human body. What language is it in?"

"It's in my language. There is a dictionary and a book on grammar. You are free to translate them if you wish but I will sell the books to those that wish to learn. We have thousands of years to learn more and mankind can benefit. These are the seeds I spoke of."

I stayed in Madrid for two weeks. During that time, I found people to sell my books. The men I chose were not as altruistic as those in France but they would get the job done.

Again I purchased land for a bank but it was not time to start any work on it.

I still had to deal with Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal. They did not have the land I needed so I felt I could deal with them later.



-------

Chapter 5


China and India as well as all the major cities in Europe and North America had to be monitored. In the case of the Far East, more satellites had to be put in orbit. Our units were very crude by Pack standards because we had to use the information we had in out data storage. Sometimes we could make logical deductions and improve in what the natives of today would call civilian equipment.

Monitoring the cities from orbit gave us little information but drones were made by the thousands that flooded the area to secure the data we needed.

Important individuals had a drone dedicated to them. This was spying on a person's private life and was abhorrent to me. I rationalised what was happening by telling myself that Harpo and the other computers were monitoring the situation, not me. I felt pain when my conscience told me that I would be informed of important events or a verbal summary of what was happening in the world.

One thing I learned was that Hector had miraculously sold all his books and could sell more. He had to get the next twenty-nine volumes of the medical encyclopaedia. This was selling so well that we had to do a reprint of the first volume as well. All together seventy-five thousand sets would be sold or put on the market.

Other books were printed and readied for shipment. Dictionaries of all the major languages as well as ones that converted one language to another.

The book on British aristocracy almost got Hector put in jail but he had taken my advice and found barristers ready to fight for his rights. The common people could not read the history but they could hear what others said about this. Hector even solicited funds from the poor and had people read chapters from the book.

The population simply loved to see how their betters had feet of clay.

When the aristocracy clamped down on this, there was a howl of outrage. When Hector was jailed, it was the English mob that cried for his release.

Harpo and the other computers had studied English law and put forward arguments to shield Hector. When this did not work well enough other portions of the history book were read where innocent men were railroaded into jail by the powers that be.

The screaming of the crowds convinced the courts to try to do justice instead of the mob justice that could come about if the populace was not satisfied.

Hector was released and he spent his time in London talking about the excesses of the English lords and comparing them to those across the channel.

This also had the benefit of advertising his books. During his arrest, he admitted that the books came from a salesman in the Ottoman Empire. These people were already well known for making excellent paper and having great printing ability.

Our warship was still in the Appalachian Mountains waiting to be used. A much smaller wooden sailing ship was constructed that relied on wind power. It was still much larger than any ship of this time apart from our steam powered ship. This design like the other could be deduced from information we had gathered before I was thrown into my past.

This ship, with wind power alone, crossed the Atlantic in just three weeks with a crew of Cherokee, Chickasaw and Scots. In the hold were many ceramic cases containing the latest shipment of books, cloth and a sewing machines.

The Scots knew all about smuggling and the cargo was brought ashore without incident by Hector's family. This whole act was to show Hector's family that the books did not magically appear in a barn one night. It also served to promote the North American native as an educated man because none of the Scots on the ship were the Captain.

The contents of the packing cases could possibly start a revolution. These were poorly printed books attacking all the religions except the Church of England. It quoted unnamed members of the English aristocracy. The author came across as conciliatory and truthful. Many instances were documented where the facts the other religions wished to hide, could be found and proved in public records. The high living clergy were mentioned by name and what really happened to the money they gathered.

A Catholic that nobody would be able to find would attack all religions but his own. It was particularly aimed at the Anglicans in retort to what the other book divulged.

This book was printed in both Spanish and French so there was twice as many. This Catholic author was frothing at the mouth but everything he said was truthful too. Since the mainland clergy were more guilty than the English, the author made arguments to protect the immoral Church members. His defence was faulty and a reader could see this if they looked.

The paper in all these books was poor and so was the choice of typeface and more importantly, both looked very different as if printed on different machines.

I arrived on the ship as the owner and thanked Captain Hawk of the Chickasaw for the comfortable trip in front of Hector's family.

Hector was coming back to Glasgow from his incarceration to be presented with the latest shipment. I could feel his worry because of the trouble he had been through.

Hector read both of the books on religion and frowned, "This second book would get me hung not thrown in jail."

"I know Hector. Don't start until you have the second book safely in the another countries. Remember, you have to have enough time pass for an author to write a rebuttal and get it into print then distribute it."

"I know. I had seen this trouble before but I had never thought the English would actually throw me in jail."

"Are you using the courts to press a case for abuse of power?"

"The lawyers said it would not come to much and I would be years at it."

"Just keep yourself safe. The storm that will come will have all printing presses monitored or possibly destroyed."

Hector was very distraught now. "Those presses of mine are printing money. I sell every book I make almost as soon as the ink is dry."

"That's good to hear. I also hear that your schools are doing very well."

He smiled at me now. "It could be because some donor gave me thousands of books for those that could not read with beautiful pictures. I have people coming to me an beg to get to go to school."

This was the normal state of affairs. Most people saw the rich as educated and tried to learn but had no way of doing so.

Hector added, "The wee lassies distract the lads. I should have them in separate schools."

"This is a fact of life. It's best for them to get used to this now."

"I know."

Schools in North America had cropped up in many of the native villages. It was not just the Cherokee but the other tribes that were doing the teaching. The school buildings were constructed under the watchful eyes of the villages. A clinic, gym, food storage areas, water storage and a septic system were added and all was constructed out of benasso.

The doctors were newly minted and had to consult the medical texts regularly. It was easy for the youngsters to see the respect the doctors got and want to learn for themselves.

The North America army had begun and after the visit of Captain Fustian, it had gained momentum. There were lots of aspirants but we chose carefully. Some individuals were better off in the army where they could be controlled. The most brutal were monitored carefully and given jobs to instill discipline.

These people were marked with a helmet and a communicator so that they could be coaxed by one or more of the computers to do what was needed. Along the way, those wearing the communicators learned to obey too.

The military bases were placed in strategic locations but were usually empty. Large training bases were made. Here the recruits were shown unimaginable luxury but had to work very hard to enjoy it. Rivalry was encouraged through sports and war games but never along tribal lines. Colours were used instead of animal names. The latter denoted some native races more than others.

The biggest help was the way the local natives expanded our reach. They took holographic units and drones in every direction to reach the villages.

The negotiations with the French and the Spanish crown did not go far. I visited often but still had to find representatives to assist me. These were usually members of the enlightenment. I was offered a place in their number and accepted it.

I was also offered induction into the Illuminati and the Freemasons. These were powerful underground movements that would shape human progress for centuries to come. Neither looked good from my place as a person from the twenty-third century but both were certainly better than what was in place in the eighteenth.

I propose my own written oath. A man's word was important to him in my time and in this one but there was a difference in the criteria. It was not that one was better than the other but that I wanted it clear what I would and would not do.

Both organisations tentatively accepted me and I them but meetings would be a problem.

I saw the benefit of their organisation and the power of some people near the world leaders. In turn I could assist both organisations to further their aims and perhaps guide them into a path I considered better for mankind.

The onboard encyclopaedia said that a smallpox epidemic was going to sweep Boston. We had to let it start and be recognised before we began large scale inoculations by the native doctors. There was a lot of opposition to this but those given an injection did not die.

In the spring of 1722, I made a point of finding a sixteen year-old boy by the name of Benjamin Franklin. He was currently employed as an apprentice in his brother James printing firm. History showed that James would get in trouble with what he printed and Ben would not be popular with the city fathers. In September of next year, he would run away to Philadelphia. It would be better to meet him first.

He was one of the future members of both organisations. The man was a genius with charm, determination and a great thirst for learning.

I entered the front door of The New England Courant and met the boy for the first time. From the way he reacted, I knew that he knew who I was.

"Hello Mr Stuart. How may I help you, Sir?"

"Hello Ben. I saw you squinting over your work from the street."

The boy was surprised, probably since I knew his name. He confirmed my suspicions by saying, "How do you know me, Sir?"

"You are in my library enough that I recognised you."

He blushed and looked down then up again. "I thank you very much for allowing me to read your books."

I had been doing a lot of book buying in Europe simply because so many books were lost. The duplicates were put in my library along with some ringers. The ringers were books made to look old but propounded ideas I wanted known. These ideas would reinforce my own teachings. "You're very welcome, Ben."

"What can I do for you, Sir."

"I would like to get a book printed."

"A book, like in your library?"

"Yes. It is my opinions of the moral decay I see. It does not touch on religion so it can be safely printed or at least I think so."

"I'd be happy to get my brother."

"In a moment please." Ben stopped and I said, "I'm working on another book. This one carries on after Newton's Opticks. There is a lot more detail and much more mathematics involved. You are wearing a simple form of spectacles. Ours will be different in that we grind the lower portion different than the upper portion. This will correct some of the problems we have found."

"Is that why you said I was squinting?"

The boy was smart and I said so. "I'm also looking for a smart young man to work in my R & D facility. R & D means research and development. We are doing experiments on light, we are making steam engines of a radically new design and we are using a form of lightning that could be used for communications. Each idea is worth many millions of pounds."

"You want me?"

"You are bright, inquisitive and I think honourable. You can decide after you publish the first book."

"I can't abandon my brother."

"I have a replacement in mind. He does not have your gifts but he's dedicated."

"I certainly will think on this. Would you like to talk to my brother?"

"I would." I handed over a hand written book that discussed man's inhumanity to man.

Ben had to go back to work but I knew he wanted to read the book. His brother was out and I would have to come back later to iron out the details.

A month later Ben quit his job and Tall Tree took his place. The Creek was bright and could speak fairly good English. He would work for James and try to keep him out of trouble while suggesting improvements to the business.

I did my part by purchasing advertisements in the newspaper about my products. Charles did the same. With a little chiding, Molly advertised her seamstress business which boasted one of the few real sewing machines in the province.

Ben was unaware that everyone in the lab he worked for was taught by the computers. They communicated with the machines daily to further their education. The purpose was manifold. The natives and the Scots promoted native innovation. When something was presented, we would have a ready team of people that could describe what had been built so it was not branded as witchcraft.

One of the first devices was our hang glider. To prepare the way I posted a prize for any glider. I got the city fathers to add to it. This would force them accept what would happen. European and native North America people participated. Here we had ringers too because many ideas were good but not quite ready for introducing flight. They would show a divergence of ideas though as well as show off the natives as thinkers.

Tall Tree did a very good article on the entire event. This was published in the newspaper and copies would reach all the major British cities like Halifax, Philadelphia, New York and Williamburg within a few weeks.

Ben was there too with his own invention. It was not very good but all the contestants got a pound for trying hard. This was a lot of money for the time.

The winner of course was a Cherokee girl that used silk and some thin oak strips. I publicly talked to her parents who were both doctors if I could get the child to help making a kite for a man. They agreed. Three weeks later, the girl, Rainbow successfully flew from the top of my warehouse in front of the town fathers.

Tall Tree and Ben both did articles that would go into the paper. The Church was not impressed but they could not bitch because many of the previous contestants had been their children.

Ben worked on the kite until I pulled him off and showed him how a hard needle on a taut diaphragm would sound quite loud. The reverse was used to make indentations in a plastic compound we made that was similar to vinyl. Within a week we had our first phonograph record.

The young man lived with the rest of his group. I had made Judo compulsory as it was in my time. Ben was determined but did not match up to the natives that were much stronger.

I approached him as he got up from the mat where Blossom had thrown him. I smiled at the girl and waited for Ben. Ben got up quickly when he saw me and hurriedly approached.

"Hello Sir. Did you wish me to do something for you?"

"Yes I do Ben but let me ask some questions first just to set the stage?"

"Certainly Sir." A big smile came out. I usually gave him a task at these times that pushed back the boundaries of knowledge so he was well ready.

"I'll ask the questions all at once. What is your opinion of your present circumstances? Is the organisation you are now employed by elitist, evil, arrogant, foolish, dangerous, or mismanaged? I wish the facts. I will think less of you if you colour your answers for me."

Ben thought for a while. I could feel his consternation then it stopped as he thought. "I think Stuart Trading Company is the best company I can imagine. They help the poor and the sick. They build to help the community. They do not even work to overcome other merchants. As for me, I'm the happiest I have ever been. I get to read and study and then put what I learn to work. The only thing I might change is your insistence on this physical activity."

I had to smile at his eagerness. "In a year, your brother James will not be able to slap you around. You are stronger and leaner. You are also more healthy. You move with grace and not like a proper gentleman."

Ben frowned so I added, "You are like a predatory cat looking for a fight. The women respond to this."

He brightened and said, "Thank you for the compliment but I have had little time to let the fine ladies of the town see me. Here I am just a kitten among the older cats. They teach me and perhaps play with me. I am more of a kitten playing a stalker to an indulgent mother cat."

"If there is no pain, there is no gain."

"I like that turn of phrase, Sir."

"You may use it with my blessings and this brings me to the reason I'm talking to you now."

"Yes, Sir?"

I would like some articles published that talk about what we do so the citizens of this land know more about us."

"I can do that easily, Sir."

"I know you can but I want Mrs Dogood to also write her own summary. I'm sure she came here at one time or another to visit. I'm equally sure Silence Dogood would find something amusing about us. Two opinions are better than one and humour even if it is self-deprecating is a good idea."

Ben was red. "You know?"

"Certainly. That was one of the many reasons I hired you. Humour and wit you have as well as a keen mind."

Ben wrote letters under the name Silence Dogood. The character was a widow of nearly forty with three children. The city fathers, merchants and others were poked fun at. The men did not like this and would try to do some unpleasantness to the author.

Ben's letters were funny enough to be published in the leading newspaper in London. In a way it was a shame that I hired him because the letters stopped. Perhaps he would start up again.

By Christmas, we had him wearing the new bifocal spectacles and also a quite a few of the local citizenry. For his birthday, I put him on the Celeste to register the patents we made in London, Paris and Spain. This would also serve to broaden his education and expose the ship and crew to the continent. He had to make a good will visit to Halifax and deliver some of our books before carrying on to Britain.

Near the end of summer, Captain Marshal Fustian had come back to Georgia with another ship but was denied the privileges to land. The natives were in smart looking uniforms and wore sidearms and rifles. The armoured car was present and most people on the ships knew just what it was. They did not push to land but went further south.

The vehicle was moved and a new crew met the ships and again they had to leave. This happened one more time. It was hard for the English to argue with people that were so common as to be everywhere the ship tried to put in or with so many armoured vehicles.

Right after Ben left. I went to Madrid on my twelfth talk with Philip.

After our usual flowery greeting, he said, "I have learned that you are beginning to loan money to the lower class in Paris and London. You constructed two giant structures to work from. Why have you not done this here?"

"Your banking laws are more restrictive. I see no profit in doing so."

"Would you loan to the gentry?"

"I would loan some if the laws were changed."

"How much?"

"Five hundred kilos I think are enough."

"I cannot get over your way of counting."

"It's fast and accurate. It does not deal in base metal in the gold or the wear and tear on a coin."

"Some of my advisors point out that I should sell Georgia."

"That may be a good idea, especially since England now claims it too."

"Would you take this land?"

"If I got both east and west Florida I would take it."

"What would you offer?"

"Three tonnes. The present owners of the land will keep their property. They will have to follow the new laws but they are more relaxed than your laws."

"I will take five tonnes and five hundred tonnes of sugar each year."

"If you change the banking laws here, I agree to build a bank here that is the equal to London and Paris. I will further offer you four tonnes of pure gold for the land. I will have to fight the English and you can sit back and watch."

"My wife wants more of your plates."

"I will give you a set for one hundred. These ones will be in chased gold with the likeness of you and your wife on them. Nobody in the world has this yet."

"Let's see what my ministers think."

The contract was made to my satisfaction in four weeks. During that time, construction was started on the bank and on a large warehouse that would sell our products. I would get my gold back and Philip would be then ready to sell me more.

On February the sixth of 1723, the Celeste pulled into port and the crew casually carried four thousand one kilo blocks of gold from the hold.

Philip got the reports of the sampling and signed the papers. I was now a legitimate ruler but nobody knew of Alaska yet anyway. The gold made Philip's eyes almost glow but his eyes were even more attached to the porcelain with the features of he and his wife on it.

The rest of the year was devoted to informing the present tenants that they were now subject to the laws of Mu. This meant that slavery was illegal. The landowners were offered gold for their land and property but few accepted it. An ombudsman was appointed to interceded in some matters where unseen situations arose. We agreed to buy back the slaves of those that left at a fair price.

There was a short war with the landowners that was fought by our small army. The slaves rebelled as well. Spies from all the major nations were in both Floridas to see how the country was shaping up.

Some were here to give me trouble and gave advice to the slaveholders. Harpo just kept monitoring and prepared. The owners tried to ship their slaves to Cuba but this was not allowed either.

Some owners killed their slaves but we assassinated the owners when it looked like this was their plan. The scots were better at this and taught the natives the technique.

It would be another year before all the slaves were released. The majority of the landowners accepted our offer of gold and went back to Spain. More still were killed by former slaves.

Construction units built small forts in the ocean but near the shore. We boasted some long range black powder cannon.

The former slaves were put into communes and educated by teachers. It was not time for them to learn about Harpo or the drones.

The banks were doing well in the three major countries. We made sure every loan was secured by property. We verified each of the loans.

It was our warehouses that brought in the most wealth. Philip took a portion of each sale but I was comfortable with this. Native North Americas did the work in most places.

A hospital was usually affiliated with each business and we did a good business here too. The rich landowners had to pay for us to treat the poor as well as them. Drugs always sold at exorbitant prices to the rich but ours worked.

The reigning monarchs all had their personal doctor but those men all had read our books and now did a better job.

During the times of our troubles in Florida, the pro Anglican book came out. It was accepted so well in Britain that we had to send Hector twenty thousand more.

Some of those books made their way to North America and were soon seized and burnt. Men were thrown in jail and I felt compelled to send them aid anonymously in the form of legal help.

Eight months after this book first came out, the other two books arrived. There were still a lot of Catholics in Britain and they too read the retorts. The Church of England now burnt the books. All the book sellers were questioned as to where the books came from.

Life was bad for strangers preaching any religion other than the one the community favoured. Mobs had killed a few of the upper echelon French clergy and the rest of the church was shaken.

Strange newspapers came out that talked about some of the particularly bad individuals but nobody knew where the newspapers came from. There was a listing of their wealth when we could find it. Some stories mentioned sexual deviance and this was brought out with pictures of the men doing their despicable acts. When the clergy fled to safer surroundings, pamphlets gave the information to the public.

Into all this, the English were testing the new cannon the Scot had developed. The process for making the cannon was much more expensive and difficult than simply casting them. The Spanish and the French were kept well informed of the developments. New taxes were introduced and the two countries began to build war ships.

England saw this and prepared for war too. My own ships were nearing completion and these were offered to the crown at a premium price. They did not like it but they paid.

The European people in North America were not colonies yet but they felt the pinch too. Most of the taxes were based on imported goods. I just happened to have a lot of goods that I had purchased in China and India. The English in North America learned to their detriment that they could not compete. Ships that came here to trade had to drop their prices for their cargoes if they wanted to buy our produce. This would discourage trade.

Louis XV of France attained his majority and I was on hand to congratulate him and give him a small gift or bribe. He was young and full of vigour and perhaps foolishness too. If he went to war, he would need gold to buy ships and hire men.

I built four warehouses that resembled locally made structures in each of the three countries. I stocked them with various kinds of alcoholic products. Our wares were far superior and sold very well. Cloth was taxed but we smuggled better than anybody had before. Again, this discouraged trade.

The London bank issued paper money that was impossible for current technology to duplicate. At the same time we introduced counterfeit bills of other kinds. Ours were so good you could not tell them from the real ones.

When this worked well, we tried to do the same thing in the other two countries but I could not make my own currency. The English Exchequer wanted my bank to print their own new bills but we avoided the issue as much as possible.

The Exchequer retaliated and called in all our paper money and we cheerfully redeemed it in gold. In fact they were shocked to get the bullion immediately. They then had to call out a the military to protect their burden.

We issued our own gold coins with an alloy to make them strong but the gold content was still a full troy ounce. They were punched out on a giant press. It would be difficult to scrape small amounts of gold from each coin as what was usually done. Our coins actually said their gold content so they were readily accepted.

To add to the problems, some strange ships started damaging English, French and Spanish ships that came to Africa to purchase slaves. We tried to reduce the lose of life as much as possible. Hemp cloth, inferior to what we usually made, was sold to the Africans. I did not want the Europeans to think that I was the one attacking them. Whiskey was sold too and again it had to be different from what was sold in Europe.

Some of those same ships we destroyed, were church owned vessels. Most were European but some were from North America. These particular ones were destroyed outside their own ports. The Admiralty had to pay a lot more money to protect the shipping from pirates.

Georgia was turned into one large checkerboard of farms. Animals had their place and so did man. Automated machinery stripped out much of the trees in the sections we chose and in some, seedlings were planted. By the fall of 1723 there had been a good harvest of local grains.

Britain always had problems feeding itself, so this grain was sold to Britain for gold. The harvest of 1724 looked even better.

The great powers had problems in China. The Chinese Emperor said that all foreign traders had to do business in Guangzhou and not where they chose. If I had not disturbed history too much then all foreign missionaries would soon be expelled as well. Also in 1724 Philip V would step down in favour of his 17 year-old son Louis I. The boy was the son of his first wife Maria Louisa of Savoy. This son had died of smallpox in my history but now would make it because of the vaccines we made.

I was now in uncharted territory because I would not know what Louis I of Spain was like. I hoped he acted like so many other aristocrats of this time and had a war or two thrown in their honour.

I had to trade through Guangzhou unless I was going to smuggle but I had nothing against China other than it was not responding to the threats. I had sent mail to the old and the new Emperor about the what would happen.

To cement a sort of friendship, China received one hundred heavy wall 250 millimetre smoothbore cannons, fifty tonnes of powder and five thousand hollow cannon shells suitable for making explosive rounds. These were not round but elongated so there would be more powder and a further range. Explosive shells had not been invented yet so this weapon would be a major shock to any invader. To make them work, a special fuse had to be made that copied an old Belgium design.

I was not subtle because each cannon looked like a dragon and were far heavier than what the same cannon would be without the extra mass. Their increased range would excel anything the British had including our new cannon.

We had a party in Georgia to celebrate the new year of 1725. In a few months, I would have been here six years. I loved my new life but my morals had been destroyed. I had fermented war and caused the deaths of people. I destroyed property to get my way. I manipulated millions of people, even if it was just a bit.

The natives in North America knew about Hawk Eye. Those in Mexico always fought the Spanish simply because of their cruelty. Attacks on the Spanish now were in a more military fashion and were aided by me.

The natives in what was Canada in my time fought the British if the invaders acted aggressively but basically told them to get off their land. Alaska and had permanent garrisons that extended all down the coast to Mexico. If the British came to enforce their claims, they would find the area inhabited.

The orbital commuter was completed and now could shuffled troops to hot spots to enforce our own claims. There were few of these and the craft was used to influence the natives to gain their cooperation. We had done this in the east and stopped nearly all the threats to the white communities.

We were working eastward and enforcing our claim to all the land. Trading posts were destroyed and the survivors pushed east to tell the others. Our own posts were set up to educate the natives, treat their diseases and talk about the new world they found themselves in.

Epidemics still happened but not like they had before. Sexually transmitted diseases were cut back if the natives came to one of our hospitals. Along with this medical attention, I manipulated people more by making them less fertile and giving them a drug that altered their DNA to lessen their attraction to alcohol.

Louis I was true to form. The smallpox epidemic did not get too far and he lived more than seven months on the throne. He did though want to do what his stepmother Elizabeth wanted.

The family wanted loans to prepare for the war they had planned. I agreed but they had to put up the land I wanted as collateral. I even offered to give them the full thirty tonnes if they wished.

Louis and his stepmother did not like this and wanted to seize my bank but did not know of a way to do it. The manager of the branch tried to tidy up without appearing to. I tidied up too because it looked like a form of end game to me.

I would need good cooperation and this meant communications. Harpo put forth a plan involving Ben and two promising native boys.

Louis XV knew of the preparations and wanted money too. He though was willing to negotiate. I sweetened the deal to a 100,000,000 francs which was 32 tonnes of gold. After a lot of soul searching, we came to a deal. I made a point of informing Elizabeth of the facts.

In the fall of 1724 I had finally made the Louisiana Purchase that also included Lower Canada.

The deal was completed at the Paris bank. Louis XV oversaw the removal of 32,000 one kilo bars of gold then signed the papers. I think he trusted my word enough because he did not wait to check the gold before he signed a lot of papers.

Louis I and his stepmother were not as happy. He was not going to war against France but in a war like he proposed, France would be drawn in.

In the coming days, when word got out to England and the rest of Spain, there was a backlash against the banks. Some of it encouraged by the two governments and a lot of the leading aristocracy.

Harpo said, "It appears that the army will come in to put down the riot but also take the bank in London. The same will occur in Madrid."

I knew what this meant and said, "Are you closing the hospitals?"

"I will do so now. The doctors may not want to leave their patients."

"They are free to do as they wish, just tell them what their probable fate will be."

Letters were sent out to all those that borrowed money. They were told to send their payments to the Exchequer instead. The next paragraph mentioned me retrieving the money from the Exchequer at a later date.

The bank was closed because of the mob outside. One of the many tunnels were used to get the local employees to safety. They were paid their wages and given two months extra pay. They were to look for alternate employment until the problems were over.

The army came the next day at noon and disbursed the much stronger crowd. A polite knock at our door did not gain admittance like they hoped. It was at noon the next day that cannon were brought in to knock harder. They were amazed that the ceramic doors did not show any damage. The stone sheathed benasso walls were hammered at next. They were heartened to see that the rock disintegrated but only a few chips were knocked off the benasso.

The next day the Spanish tried the same trick. The difference was that the Spanish authorities started to kill the Doctors that had not left and then the staff and patients in the hospital. We had no assets ready to protect those that stayed and watched helplessly.

The Paris bank had closed when the attacks came. This was done more orderly and I even sent a note to Louis XV asking him to receive my payments until it was time for me to recover them. He was honourable up to a point but I knew he would chuckle when he read it. Getting the gold from him might be problematical.

Back in North America we built ships not forts. The Celeste II was finally lifted up from the lake it was in and placed in the Atlantic. What we would do was hide most of our abilities like flying and rely on hand weapons. The large ship would be held in reserve. It's shock value would be greater when the real fighting started.

We flew north and began making a fort on the St Lawrence. French and British ships used this river. The former could go through but not the latter. This was now the territorial waters of Mu.

At the same time Harpo was using his holographic viewer to tell everybody he could about the new developments. Over the next month, we had an influx of volunteers to fight the enemy. In another month many went back to their villages as more arrived. The first group did not like the training and thought they could just kill the enemy one on one. The younger ones had been raised looking at the holograms and took to the training much better.

We did not have too much more time because ships were leaving Portsmouth now to try to secure my bank then go south and try to take Georgia and Florida. They figured I would be consolidating my gains now and not ready for the attack. On the way they would stop at Bermuda to take on fresh water.

I could do nothing yet because the English had not done anything to me.

I debated a lot what to do with the British population. Most were bigoted and religious fanatics but some were my friends. I had no problem with them apart from their use of slaves. When the British came, they would try to rouse the populous to some sort of patriotic fervour.

The newspapers I owned or put out advertising in had always slanted news my way. I complained about high taxes with no representation. In fact I used what the merchants of this area used in the future when they rebelled against their mother land.

The articles had got more intense when I knew this problem started.

Ben Franklin was working on a radio transmitter since we let him in on some of the details of electronics. A native group developed the diode and the triode tubes just weeks before. The details were printed in the newspapers of all the major North American cities.

There were also many children in the upper schools working on basic electricity and electronics. The Collegiate School in Saybrook had changed its name to Yale University a few years ago and I was its principle donor. They too were working on making a transmitter and a receiver in their new science wing. Harvard had the same equipment thanks to me and they were on a quest to see who could develop the radio first. I of course was going to pay the victor a reward.

It was time to talk of a new transmitter that could reach across the Atlantic. Angus Agnew was contacted to give a theatrical performance. He raced his ship to New Haven and told them to be ready because a radio message would be attempted from London. He went east then north to Boston and gave the same message.

The momentous day was a sham but everybody was ready to receive the broadcast. The message arrived in a form similar to Morse Code. The communiqué was slow enough for everybody to hear the spaces between pulses.

The message was formal and the people at the transmitter stated that they did not know if we were getting the message or not. The next message was then directed to me. The sender was acting nervous on purpose and told me of a giant flotilla of Spanish ships coming this way with an escort of British war ships. They then talked about the murder of the Doctors and staff in Madrid and even the Spanish patients they treated. The sender felt that the two major powers were now robbing my banks to further their war efforts.

The message was long and it was repeated four times but the wording was different each time as if this was not a staged event. The message though was written down so it could be put in the newspapers.

I added my own message so it would go into the newspapers. The British had known about the new country called Mu but they did not know the ruler. They had met the ships from Mu and traded with them. This was the source of the beautiful cloth and the porcelain. They also knew the tale I gave about Mu almost disappearing beneath the waves of the Indian Ocean.

What the colonists did not know was that Mu provided all the books the world was agog about. They also did not know that Mu was behind the spate of inventions and drugs that saved so many lives. In a three page writeup I explained all this and admitted to being the Crown Prince of Mu.

The last page dealt with the situation on the continent and how two countries wanted to rob me after all I had done for them and the rest of the world. I listed my aims as staying alive and protecting my people while ending tyranny. In the process, I was going to make a utopia if I could.

The message in the newspapers went out and I went on the campaign trail as if I was seeking to be elected. I hammered home my message to large groups and tried to explain my position and what I was going to do. I also put in the probable effect I would have on the local economy.

Halifax was the first city on the campaign trail. It was also a difficult city to deal with. They had our books and a free library but they did not want to print many of our articles even if they were not very critical of Britain. We ended up setting up our own newspaper. The city fathers wanted us out but had not got up the nerve to say so yet.

A contract for two ships meant a lot of employment and when we offered this to the shipyards. The opposition to the newspaper dropped but did not disappear.

I arrived in Boston and the local garrison wanted to arrest me on the chance I was not lying. This was a logical enough process that I had prepared for it. The soldiers found themselves ambushed by my native army. Teargas was used and nobody died. I took this as an attack on me and the natives bent the barrels of the British weapons and threw their gunpowder into Boston harbour. The men I let go free even if they could pick up civilian weapons.

Further radio messages from Europe came in talking about support in some cities but this was a lie. People are very fickle and bit the hand that fed them.

News from the continent came our way and was published the next day in the papers. More radio receivers were made and soon the entire area got the relayed information or received it directly. We manipulated the news the way we wanted but this was no different than in my time in the non-Pack countries.

Newspaper circulation increased as we sold more paper and at a cheaper price. The number and size of the articles increased including the price of certain commodities in Europe. The woodcuts used in books to show images were used now in the newspapers.

The phantom men and women in Europe made two more equally phantom transmitters that covered Spain and France directly. The citizens of North America started to become news junkies.

In the newspapers in North America, I publicly said I was going to send reporters to Europe. Ben desperately wanted to go but I would not allow it. The men that left, actually went to Georgia and Harpo took over their jobs. He reported all the small details that soon made the readers start to despise those in their homeland or Europe in general.

The British garrisons in North America tried to send ships to England and Bermuda to tell what they knew but all of them were intercepted. Usually there was little bloodshed because we used teargas.

The trick to getting the natives to fight the way I wanted was to first train them the way I wanted. After training or a mission they each had to make a factual report. What was done right made the person proud but what was done wrong was discussed as well. Each man and woman learned by their mistakes and saw how peer pressure could get them to work as a team.

Those that acted the berserker or just acted foolish were ridiculed and then ostracised by their comrades. The army grew from four thousand to twelve by the time the ships arrived in New York.

Since I was not yet claiming this land for Mu, I would have to let the troops land unopposed. The new arrivals soon learned from the locals what was happening.

In the spring of 1725 the fleet arrived and the first thing the British troops did was destroy the printing presses that printed my letters and articles. This happened to be every one in the city. Printers and their apprentices were beaten and one died of a fall. The shops were looted and one was set to the torch.

Small drones attacked the men with infrared lasers. The soldiers did not know what was happening but they got angry. Angry soldiers did foolish things. It took only a few minutes before a British citizen that took exception to his property destroyed to be bayoneted for his troubles.

The powder in one soldier's gun was ignited and the ball was flung upward. Now people were frightened and so were the invaders. Harpo harassed the soldiers all he could as long as the soldiers didn't get a chance to learn what was happening to them. Tractors and repellers tripped soldiers but we did not want them to think that there were spirits.

Holograms of irate citizens with guns appeared on roofs. No images or the sounds of the shots were made but the soldiers reacted and shot instead. Phantom citizens were hit and fell but no bodies were found or even blood.

In the harbour, bags of black powder went to the Spanish and the British flag ships and were detonated. Nobody was killed but the crews went on a war footing. Soon the retreating soldiers were spotted at the shore. Lasers ignited the powder in two of their muskets.

Rocks and refuse appeared to be thrown from behind walls and homes but they always hit the soldiers. Some of the officers had commandeered horses and the horses were attacked with lasers. Some of the officers fell and one fatally.

From openings in the buildings, 'Wild Indians' used their bows to attack the soldiers. Most of the images were just holograms but some were the real thing. They shot and ran like they were taught.

The citizens ran for cover but some were mistakenly shot by the soldiers. The imitation sound of civilian musket retorts were heard. The 'Wild Indians' took three more soldiers but they tried to hit officers if possible. One native was shot but the armour he wore saved his life.

The soldiers retreated to their ships with the occasional grenade thrown their way to hurry them along. When they got near, two of the Spanish ships were attacked with bags of powder that did nothing more than blacken the hull and make a noise. They already had loaded their artillery and aimed them at the shore.

One Spanish lad came too close to a loaded cannon with his piece of smoldering rope. A drone controlled by Harpo gave him a burn and he flinched. The ember ignited the charge in the pan and a Spanish cannon ball flew into Boston.

From the shore came musket fire in retaliation but it did nothing to the ships. After ten minutes, there were no further attacks.

British men in our employ raced to the major cities on horseback carrying a woodcut of a soldier using his bayonet on a printer. The printer had since died because he could not get to a doctor in time. The radio carried the details of what happened to all the cities along with a hurried eulogy. Subsequent editions would have the image from the woodcut.

Two hours later the admiral decided to talk and had a parley flag readied. A boat was put into the water. With no flag evident yet, the muskets from shore fired. It was our compressed air guns that were used to hit the targets. Two officers were hit. The flag was never shown.

The harassment from the shore and the death of the two officers prompted the admiral to bombard the buildings thought to be harbouring the attackers. When the Spanish took hits they too started to bombard the area on their own initiative.

Radio messages were sent out where each shell landed and who had fired it. Some shells landed in the city and we spoke of probable deaths. The news was slanted now that the Spanish were killing the British population.

The garrison had cannons too. We captured them and then turned them on the ships to defend the city. Locals were chivied into helping. Once they started, they continued without any more pushing. The names of these people went out to not only New York but the other cities up and down the coast.

Fort George near New York and the buildings on shore were taking too many hits and we withdrew. I tried to get the locals to retreat but some just had to stay. They soon died for their troubles but not before a Spanish ship exploded after being hit with one of the balls from the fort's cannons.

The ships did not retreat but they slowed down their bombardment as only sporadic rounds from small arms came from to them.

Not all my people were fighting with guns. They began to form mobs bent on throwing the invaders out of our waters. In the other cities the same thing was happening even though cooler heads were trying to quell the unrest. The local garrisons had heard the news and fled behind their walls.

In Philadelphia, three hot heads decided to take shots at Fort Mifflin which brought a few shots in return but then it stopped.

Halifax was not siding with me at all even though I had been trying to convince the populous of my good intentions.

Back in New York, we hit the ships again because they were thinking of trying to start talks again. The bodies of the men that died in the fort were taken out and more eulogies were given. None of these men were my employees so it looked like a general uprising. We took casualties too. The men learned that my armour is no proof against a cannon ball.

The cannons, projectiles and the barrels of powder were pulled from the fort and then set up in a depression. The cannon shot upward like a mortar and we again targeted ships. The Spanish and British return fire went over out head with no damage. With twenty of the thirty seven ships hit, they retreated out of range.

During the night boats filled with black powder were sent among the ships. We only scorched one British vessel but the rest were on the look out.

Musket fire was heard from seaward and the flashes were seen. Eventually the orders were given to suppress this fire which made lots of noise onboard the ships which in turn kept crews nervous and awake.

To add to the discomfort, the sound of native war drums was heard as if they were in their canoes and ready to attack from the darkness.

From a kilometre above, the men dropped arrows from my pod. They did no damage but were seen as sticking out of the deck by lantern light.

What sent real fear into any sailor was fire. Small ships were later pushed toward the combined fleet by drones and burst into flame just before they struck. The cannon crews protected their ships well. Sometimes we placed these boats between a British and a Spanish ship. The two fired at the flaming boat and succeeded in damaging each other. All this did was to heighten the crews sense of insecurity.

The daylight could not come too early for the officers and crews. They had meetings all night as we had on shore. I or my people did not have to push for a fight because some men were spoiling for one now. The sound of the fighting that came over the water seemed to inspire the firebrands.

In my own defence I claimed that all armies acted highhandedly when dealing with civilians, even their own.

Last year we had to make law books. They were given to the Spanish in both Floridas. They were a compilation of laws the Pack set up that were simple and straight forward. I now quoted the English translation so the people would know how Mu would act and react. Those same laws were scrupulously followed when dealing with the Spanish population. Other portions of the book were not mentioned because they would learn they would lose their slaves.

When morning came a boat was lowered again but the cannons were now aimed for the maximum distance and came remarkably close to striking the cutter.

Near noon, the ships pulled up anchor and headed to Boston.

Boston was in an uproar. Ben was pushed and came up with the idea of a naval mine. This is what we wanted and wrought iron was quickly formed into a sphere with five whiskers to detonate the powder it would contain. Three were carried out in small ships and anchored where the warships would come. What I was after was for the population to see that one of their own was coming up with some of the defences. They were by no means committed to fighting their homeland even if they were presently allied with Spain.

That evening, the ships came into the harbour. Harpo ensured that all three mines were in the right place at the right time to greet three ships. Ben was gratified with what he did until he though of the lives that were lost.

Small boats with some of the garrison fled the shoreline and we let them go. They would carry the news of the mines to their superiors.

The remaining soldiers in the garrison came under musket fire and they returned the shot until they found that too many of them were being hit. The fort was taken and the cannon used. It was then similar to what happened in New York.

Again a parley was attempted but our own cannon shot at them to keep them away.

The natives that had fought the settlers up to three years ago now wanted to get in boats and take the fight to the ships. Only some of this was faked because the older natives really wanted to fight. This shamed some of the whites.

When the remainder of the ships went south. Harpo told me that the ships would try to make landfall in Georgia but would look for suitable places to put in for water and supplies.

The army of Mu harried the flotilla every time they came close to the shore. I stayed in the north trying to get the backing of the settlers. They had been pushed by events but now saw that they were defying their own country and that country was powerful.

I used all the old arguments I used before but tried to make them sound new. I had to rub salt in their wounds when I said how some people ran to greet the soldiers in New York after learning about them. The result had been many people killed and wounded not to mention property damage.

As a bribe, I said, "I want to train more of the militia and build two warships."

One man said, "Who will pay? We cannot do it."

"I will if I must. I can pay a shilling a day and provide money for food while they train. When we fight, I will pay them five shillings a day."

"How much for the officers?"

"I will supply the officers above the rank of lieutenant. Those men will get seven shillings a day when fighting but only a shilling a day during training. Few men will want to be an officer."

"Why? It has always been a good position."

"The army of Mu does not fight foolishly. There are few of us and every life is valuable. Being a lieutenant is not like being in the aristocracy. The lieutenants all have to work hard. We fight to win."

They did not like this so I said, "Some of you will have to find the food I need and then transport it to where it's needed."

This was talk they liked a lot better and some men offered to take care of everything for me and then the rest objected. It turned out that the men would be paid a finder's fee for bringing in able bodied men.

I repeated myself in the newspapers and found I had to pay more to get the men to turn mercenary. Every able bodied man that tried to sign up was unknowingly photographed. Information about his family tree had to be divulged. After which the men were cured of what diseases they had not cured before and I treated many heredity related problems.

Like the natives, most of the whites washed out of boot camp. It was not so much that they were weak but that they did not want to follow orders especially from a native.

Single women were hired but few applied. They found that they had to go through boot camp too. The native women were usually stronger than the men because they worked so much more. All the whites saw how effective we were and how good our weapons were.

The British army was rounded up but sometimes we had to use teargas to get them out of their forts. They already knew from others that we did not kill or harm our prisoners.

Some had escaped and headed every which way. There was a game of tracking them but I knew that the soldiers did not find it fun. In a way this lessened the fear because we showed how a trained military acted in a controlled and purposeful way.

The flotilla could not get to shore even when they tried a night landing. In the end they sailed for Havana with their good friends the Spanish.

We did our best to mobilise the whites while the ships patrolled the gulf. The Spanish left to find a place to land on the gulf but were shocked to find that they could not get to land until they reached South America two months later.

Winter sailing was dangerous so the ships put in at the San Felipe de Barajas Fortress. In my time this was called Cartagena, Columbia. It seamed odd to me because the Spanish of my time were going to repel the English from this fort in only twenty years. Perhaps I had changed history too much.

In the closing weeks of 1725, the entire fleet along with three other Spanish ships, caught fire and burnt quickly. Harpo could have done this easily but commando training was now seen as very effective.

What has happened was greeted by shock in North America. This was somehow cheating. A man had to stand up and shoot his enemy and not sneak around and shoot from behind a tree.

We continued to export cloth, and now clothing, whiskey, kitchen wear and machine goods that included our very popular sewing machine. The last commodity could not be copied very well even if we did not have a patent. Hardened steel parts were used and then everything was machined accurately.

Pineapples and watermelon fetched very high prices in Europe. It was possible they could get both to grow but there was no top on the pineapple but there were seeds. The watermelon was seedless.

During the first few months of 1726, much more land in French Louisiana was stripped by machines and turned into farmland. We now had real farm equipment that could plough a square kilometre in half an hour and also collect the rocks or break them up. We had to build storage facilities but most had to employ a stasis generator.

The harvests of our advanced grain was not plentiful enough to be eaten yet but it would in a few years. We had been getting three crops a year when the weather was warm. The fruit trees were moved to a warmer climate and they were already producing. The fruits and vegetables were eaten but it was still necessary to save every one of the seeds.

When spring came, we prepared for another invasion attempt. Louis XV was convinced by the other members of the ruling club of Europe to enter a much larger game.

John V of Portugal and the merchants in Holland were told about a fabulous amount to gold I had and all of them meant to have it. The British crown also oversaw a portion of Germany called Hannover at this time. George I recruited thousands of Austrians, Hessians, Prussians and other groups to his banner. He would have encouraged those in North America to help but could not contact them. Many of the powerful countries of this time saw this as a chance to slap an upstart country and make a lot of gold by doing so. Leaving the gold aside, my products were in demand and the world leaders wanted to know how they were made.

My 'reporters' in Europe started to send back data about individuals. Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford led the Whig party and this party lead the government. This in turn meant that they governed Britain. George I was not a figurehead but he was restricted in what he could do in Britain but in Hannover, he was supreme.

Walpole was a pacifist but he was pushed into the war by his party and George I. Harpo gathered a lot of information about the man but he was fairly reputable for a English politician and we left him alone.

My paper and much better printing presses were produced and sent to New York to replace the ones destroyed. The news from our reporters was not usually Earth shattering but it served to show that the leaders in Europe were not people that should be venerated. They acted human and by this I meant all our bad attributes.

My 'research group' came up with a microphone and speaker. It was just as good as the sound of the phonograph which is to say it was not good. Ben and the rest saw a link to the radio. Two months later we had voice transmissions and in two more we had units in every major city.

The old guard fought everything we made but I had got them to see the first articles as not being formed from witchcraft so the improved model could not be much different. When I could, I used pictures of some of the conservative elements with new inventions if they favoured them. Church leaders were a specialty of mine I thought.

The newspaper parroted Tall Tree's request to find a way of sending images for the newspaper. Yale and Harvard worked on this and they came up with many ideas. The natives were going to these two schools now and shifted the research there to the areas that would work. The white students were amazed at all the things the natives did that were correct. It was as if they were blessed and in a way they were. We soon had a fax machine.

The information about the device was transmitted to Europe and in four months we had voice transmissions coming in and in four more images arrived.

We were in time to see the sketches of the various armadas being readied to head to North America.

The American Anthem talked about the 'rockets red glare'. The British had used a rocket after it was used on them by the Indians who had learned about it from the Chinese.

An 'accident' with gunpowder showed that we had a potential super weapon. At this time there were no explosive shells, just solid shot. China was different because I gave them this and the cannons to propel them.

The newspapers printed all of this and as usual asked for help from the readers. When we could not get an answer, Mrs Dogood gave a snippet that would encourage the rest. I was funding many of the schools with books, paper, building structures, stoves and gold. This allowed me to encourage the children to invent as well.

Rocket development surged ahead until one rocket exploded. It was not long after that we had exploding warheads. In a nonmilitary venue we had Chinese fireworks but our devices were many times larger and flew much higher. Effort was shifted to get colours in the fireballs just to lead some of the thinkers away from wondering just how we were able to come up with such ideas then develop them so quickly.

For many years the existence of steam engines was known. The settlements knew for at least a few years that we had them too and ours were better. They still failed. Rumours of our armoured cars were circulated by the British soldiers. We had confirmed their existence in the papers and downgraded the vehicle's performance but as usual we mentioned that we were working on making improvements.

Some Scots in the loop made a ship with the new engine and it delivered mail. A churchman told me that this could be used for the military and I jumped on it. The man's picture went in the paper and his idea too. Local blacksmiths under contract to me used our prepared materials and tools to copy the engines. At the same time the overworked shipyards began to modify the hulls they were building to switch to steam.

The economy had shifted just a little from the one backed by farming. I paid in the gold money of Mu for what I wanted but the funds came back when the populous bought what was made or grown in Georgia. This meant that farming was not quite so profitable for the northerners which in turn made the use of slaves more redundant.

When I made purchases, I made sure the products were not made by slaves. The resale price of slaves was dropping even though there were no new imports of this commodity.

I had purchased large tracts of land near the cities to build my shops, schools, hospitals and homes. It was the last item that the people loved. The homes were in the ring form that was common in my time. They were all made of benasso so there was no problem with fire. Each building had sewer pipes that lead to a common septic system. The attics of the homes held a lot of water and this was heated by the sun to provide hot water to wash or bathe with.

The cities were being abandoned as quickly as the units were constructed. The businesses shifted to the new land and found sewers, water, benasso topped roads and sidewalks already prepared. I bought up the land that was vacated in the city to make the transition easy.

The merchants experimented by renting space in a large enclosed area. A phonograph played music to all the patrons that shopped at these areas.

The only exception again was Halifax. I sent more people there to try to convince the people that I was not as evil as the city fathers said. We were gathering data on these people and if they continued they would find their hypocrisy exposed for all to see.

Before the armada came to our shores, Ben was seen driving around in a steam powered automobile. In the seat beside him was a three woman guard detail. They chose this job and Ben loved them. He was a horny boy and reminded me of my youth. The history I knew of him said he had two illegitimate children but then again many men of this time did this. There were a lot of false rumours too.

The vehicle shocked Boston but the women scandalised it. Not only were they good looking natives, they were armed to the teeth to protect an important male inventor. The girls said he was even getting better in bed. This again took the focus off of our producing such wonders.

The English, Spanish and the French tried to control the fleets but they did not have the communications or control. Men smelt gold and that was all they thought of.

We could have taken Bermuda to bring the fight to the enemy but I wanted them to come and to land but not without learning of our navy.

They had 617 ships of all sizes and shapes. They also had 46,000 troops. The men were packed much like the slaves when they were transported.

By late spring of 1726, they were going to Halifax, Nova Scotia. This was one of the main ship building ports. They planned on stopping at St John's, Newfoundland, Boston, New York and Plymouth which was used by the pirates of the day as well as the slavers. The majority of the ships were going to Georgia.

The eleven ships going to what was Canada were going to be stopped well away from the land and told to leave with rocket exploding off the lead ship's bow. When this happened, the crews saw three strange ships that were narrower than they were. They could not see the Jolly Roger but there was the flag of Mu on the mast. They had seen this flag before.

The ships did not stop though and a second rocket flew out and struck the ship and exploded. Normally the weapon could not do this but our rockets had an intelligent guiding system.

The first ship dropped back but the other ten continued. The next rocket exploded high overhead and spread white phosphorous that caught three ships. One fire was put out later but the other two burnt to the waterline. This tended to dissuade the rest from approaching.

Our own ships held position while the survivors were picked up. When the ships turned north east toward St John's, our ships blocked the way until they got the idea and headed east. Our ships were much faster and able to utilise even the gentle breezes. They stayed with this group for four days before turning back.

The information of this encounter was not dispersed because it would be radioed to Halifax. On the other hand, old news did not have the sense of urgency that it would now.

In the next three months the fleet learned that the cities were heavily defended. Eventually they went south and the artillery fire from shore was not as strong. Georgia was too strong for them but a ship had made it ashore in Florida.

Two weeks later they made a nighttime foray that managed to dislodge our forces. Over the course of ten days they pushed us further and further back. Half of the ships left to seek reinforcements. The Spanish that had stayed had been moved out and even compensated for their troubles. The troops pushed north and south but could not meet our army face the face. It was always hit and run.

Even though the weather was bad, the ships returned in five months. On them were even more infantry. That was when we closed the trap. Hand held and ship borne rockets destroyed the ships and three dumps that contained their powder. We pressed them from all sides but they would have to break free and head to Louisiana to leave the trap.

The natives from a thousand kilometres away got to see what was going to happen on the viewers. We had lots of food and greeted the natives respectfully but they were even more respectful because they had seen the holographic views of what we had done.

Armoured cars, tanks, trucks and even aerial recognisance were used. Napalm shells and high explosives were used to hit command centres. Officers were shot from a distance. Tanks rushed in with flame throwers. Armoured cars and trucks were just behind. Artillery rained down but we targeted areas to lessen the amount of death.

Loudspeakers were almost as effective and thousands surrendered.

This continued well into the new year and the enemy was pushed into the swamps. For the next six months stragglers found their way out to surrender but I was not going to be there to see it.

When this operation was well underway, I went to the Celeste II and sailed across the Atlantic and up the Thames. On March 11, 1727, I hammered forts along the way until I got to London then hammered the palaces of the rich as well as the House of Parliament. The only improvements I had made to the ship was to sheathe the wooden hull in thick steel and fill the deck with rocket launchers.

The British had tried to get mobile artillery to the shore but it was it not effective against the Celeste. The Scots took glee in destroying. Ian played the pipes and the amplified sound went out the speakers and to the city.

A white flag was eventually waved but we chose not to see it until we finished what we came to do.

A launch put out from the devastated shore. An officer asked who I was then gave me a packet. It seamed the government would like to talk about a little misunderstanding.

Richard Walpole came aboard with nineteen Whig politicians. We shook hands as if this was a party. I introduced some of the natives and then the three Scots. When this was done, I said, "What can I do for your gentlemen?"

Walpole was smooth and said, "We came to offer our apologies for bothering you."

"That is very kind of you but I am out of pocket a considerable amount of gold."

"We can try to make restitution."

"What were your thoughts on the matter?"

"We can give you a portion of the New World?"

"I thank you for the offer but my forces have started on the west coast of that land and are working their way to the east. By the time your army is defeated, we will have taken all of the New World."

"Why do you assume you can defeat our army?"

They did not have any news from the units in the field. "When the second wave of infantry landed, we destroyed all of the ships. The entire flotilla has sunk or burnt. We have already started to cut out pieces of the armies. We bombard the headquarters and kill the officers. The men we try to get to surrender.

"There were 87,659 men that came to Florida. A few thousand died of disease. We killed 4,935 just to keep them from spreading north. At this moment 37,216 have been placed in internment camps. We expect to gather at least 40,000 more."

"That is preposterous."

"Would you gentlemen please come with me. I wish to show you something."

We walked through an armoured port and along a passage to the bow. Six linked staterooms were here. A four man detail guarded the only exit. They saluted me and stepped aside as I said to Walpole, "Would you please enter? There is no danger."

He looked at me then did as I asked. The rest followed and I brought up the rear. Inside the spacious rooms were the highest ranking officers I had managed to capture in Florida. One was recognised and he immediately began to give his report. I went to a bar and poured drinks for all the men and had one myself.

After a few minutes, the politician began to need the drinks. We sat in comfortable chairs as we listened to what the French and the Spanish officers had to say.

The attendants came in and we had to move so they could set the table with a tablecloth embroidered with the symbols I made up about Mu then served a meal on our best porcelain. During the meal we did not talk business but this changed after the meal was over.

Walpole said, "What are your intentions, Prince Michjo?"

"This ship has a capacity of 40,000 tonnes. Half of that is in munitions. I came to negotiate. If that does not work I will leave London and go to Portsmouth and destroy your ship building capacity. Depending on the amount of ordnance I use, I will shell government buildings in the small coastal cities. It takes only fourteen days to get across the Atlantic. I can refill my bunkers and complete the work I started.

"What do you want, Prince Michjo? Surely we can come to some sort of agreement."

"I can take the remainder of the New World but I prefer to do this legally. Britain must cede full control of all its lands and possessions in the New World to the country of Mu." I added, "You will cease hostilities against me or any citizen of Mu.

"The Scots will get a degree of self rule but will still remain British citizens."

This sounded like a good deal to him and he said, "We can live with that I think."

"I did not push you hard for compensation. In return for your cooperation, I will open my bank again. I will assist you in running your economy but I will not order, only suggest. You and your people have already done much to bring civilisation to this world. I will not try to restrict this.

"I have talked to the Scots. They want much more than what I have asked for in my documents. I know they are compelled to fight simply because they are Scotsmen.

"The trading companies in the New World can continue to operate but under the laws of Mu. One of laws is that there will be no more slavery.

"On this topic, I have some farming machinery that allows one man to do the work of twenty. Once those machines are used, the need for slaves will drastically diminish. I am suggesting that you alter your laws now. Soon a landowner will find himself with some detrimental costs in keeping slaves.

Walpole said, "Do you have the particulars?"

The men got twenty copies of the requirements. The wording of the laws was even provided. It took only three days to get the papers signed. The truce held very well and I think this was because of the large carbon arc lights that illuminated the river around us.

Lisbon was next but I contented myself with destroying the forts and just threatening the city. The King was happy to alter the laws to make it more difficult to own, purchase or transport slaves. He also agreed to let me open as many schools in his country as I wanted. None of my schools would be taxed but goods I sold could be.

Spain controlled Portugal. I informed the king that an educated population would take over Spain in time.

A much smaller steam powered ship went up the Seine with a message for Louis XV. In six days the ship returned with the king and six of his ministers aboard.

Louis had a chance to talk to my officers first hand. He also knew what happened in London and Lisbon.

Louis said to me, "What is it you wish to talk to me about, Prince Michjo?"

"I am not that angry with you. You saw an opportunity and took it. You had no idea what I was capable of."

"I am still surprised. How did you know all this?"

"I mentioned before that my country is many times older than France but this did not seem to impress you. My country studies the world about us the way your countrymen strive for gold."

"I believe you now."

"Good because you may not believe this."

He looked at me wondering what I was going to say. I said, "For a fact, you will have a revolution. The rich clergy will die or flee. The aristocracy will meet the guillotine. If the revolution does not come to pass, I will make sure it does."

"Why would you do this? I thought we were friends."

"You just tried to invade my country. That makes us something other than friends. I require that you make the same kinds of laws that Britain will enact concerning slavery.

"I am going to give you a chance to start your own revolution. A revolution that you have some control over. Alter your laws to take away most of the privileges of the rich. This has happened in Britain and look how they have benefited.

"You will find great opposition to these plans. I'll loan you five thousand men with my weapons. You can only point. I do not want fools for generals to lead them. You have ten years to complete this and I have a list to what has to happen each year."

"You could not force us to do this?"

"I can go up the Seine now and destroy every fort on the way, then destroy Paris. My ships can destroy every port city in France. No French ship would escape us. I have the money to get your people to pull you and the clergy down."

I could feel his fear. I let him stew for a while then said, "In return for your compliance, I will assist your country in many ways. I do not hate France. I hate the injustice I see."

Louis got the timetable and he was able to see each of the French laws that had to be changed. It also gave a few sneaky ways of accomplishing each of the steps with the least amount of trouble. I had to thank Harpo for this because he had not reverted to his original programming yet. Louis alone got this document.

Madrid was in the centre of Spain. I could extract some form of punishment but I found that distasteful. The British would bend on what little I asked as would Portugal. France had to have a revolution but I hoped it was Louis that carried it out.

Spain would find that it was going to lose its empire and that might be enough.

We stayed long enough after Louis left to buy firewood for the boiler. With this we headed home. The radio had already informed most people of the change of leadership and I expected trouble.

I went to Halifax first and found the fort ready to fight. The conversation we had, was broadcast on the radio so everybody would hear. I promised a prosperous time with the government slowly changing to the same sort of monarchy as in Britain.

I seriously said, "When I die, the government will be a republic. If I live long enough the transition will not be too abrupt."

The Englishmen did not even like this. I mentioned that with 'our' standing army, there should be no war for a while and we had a chance to grow.

A day later, the people were very cold to me in Boston. They felt I had betrayed them. I countered with the argument that anything they had done during the war was not a crime. It would have been if Britain had won.

The POWs in the Floridas were not released but treated for their ills and inducted into the army. The Prussians were a match for the red man in many ways and I think the two worked well together. They POWs had the ability to send money and mail home as they trained.

The other Germans were almost as stiff necked as the Prussians but they still tried hard. I did not have to push them into learning about our weapons.

The Spanish had problems taking orders and were shown some harsh treatment until they bent. By then, they had some Prussian officers to lead them. The Portugese were almost as bad but not quite.

The English Marines thought they were good until they fought ours hand to hand then they decided to learn.

The French had seen the writing on the wall and tried hard and the army made them try a lot harder.

There were not that many Dutchmen but they fit in somewhere between the French and the Germans.

It was the Germans that had the better leadership ability but I put the natives as their sub officers. This way the natives could learn from what I thought was the best Europe had to offer.

They had our guns to practice with but the weapons were not issued to individuals. Over time the army got control of the weapons without them really noticing.

The men we captured were sent into the swamps to talk to those that had eluded us. It still took a long time to get the men to trust me enough to come out.

The army we had faced, learned of our weapons from the less dangerous end. Radio communications had to be explained slowly. It was witchcraft for a long time. Some unknown native R&D group had provided us with satellite phones that were explained away as direct communications. This system would be necessary for the success of my mission.

In the fall of 1727 I went to China and India to pick up produce. I came riding to my farm and Zu Chen immediately came out and then got on his knees and bowed three times and stayed low.

I was surprised and said, "Get up Chen." He only looked up and I had to urge him to get to his feet. "What happened? You never bowed to me before and I would rather you did not."

With some further urging, he said, "Master, the Emperor sent one of his most trusted ministers here to the farm. My new orders are to serve you as I serve my Emperor."

We went into the house and it took an hour to get all the information out of the man. I had to finally say, "I have a very important order for you."

"Yes, Master."

"I want you to remember what you acted like years ago." I paused for a moment and then said, "My order is for you to begin to act that way again. Your actions now bother me. We cannot exchange ideas easily. I had thought that we had some friendship between us."

All I got was, "I will try very hard, Master."

"You called me Michjo before, Chen."

"I cannot do that, Master."

"You have to because that is an order."

I had been open in my letters to the emperor. I informed him of my land and my wish to work the land. I also told him my strong opposition to the use of non-therapeutic drugs. The books he got along with the artillery should have convinced him of what I thought.

The history file said the Chinese had made the gujin tushu jicheng. This was an encyclopaedia that was printed using movable type made of copper. I wanted a copy for my library and asked the Emperor for this if he could locate it. Emperor Yongzheng of course had and a copy sent to me as a gift. It took up a considerable amount of room because it was made up of just under 10,000 individual rolls of paper.

A formal letter asked if I would make a visit. I had to think about this. The Kings in Europe were sticklers for protocol. The Chinese were even more formal. I was now the leader of a country myself. To inform the Emperor of this fact would elevate my station. If he had found out about what I had recently done, he would be worried that I wished to take over his country.

The visit would not benefit me much and there was little chance of changing the minds of the Chinese as to how to run their lives. They kept slaves and had indentured servants the same as the Europeans and all of humanity in my opinion lived in filth simply because they did not know any better.

I could benefit China in many ways. The improved plants would feed the people better and at the same time keep their numbers down. A society with more time on its hands could develop more. Another important point was that in the future, China had chosen to become a Pack country.

With my own paper and a some painting supplies. I made a reply to the letter. A second personal letter stated my own station in life as a Prince of a land nearly the size of China. In fact with Mexico and Central America, I was almost twice the size. South America did not count yet. I asked how we should meet so his people were not scandalised if we acted casually.

I added the probable date I would be coming. Mail was not a simple thing as it was in North America. There we took mail for free and dispersed it to the appropriate city and the recipient could just pick it up at the postoffice.

Here, I had to send a messenger up the Yongdine River, through the locks to get to Beijing. They then had to wait for a reply so I could make a similar trip. There was no way the Celeste II could make it up the Grand Canal without some serious dredging and some straightening out of the route.

My family and I had worked in this land before I was flung back to now. We had dug new canals and straightened out old ones including the Grand Canal.

We worked on the old Three Gorges Dam that had been built in the first part of the twenty first century. A lot of remedial work had been done to repair the dam because it was in a volcanically active area. The rock supporting the structure was very fractured and weak. The crack allowed water to saturate the rock and make it float around when the ground shook.

The Chinese cities before the Pack came were filthy. The poisons and raw sewage were usually washed out to sea but not after the dam was erected.

My family had to do a lot of repairs to the dam. We dug into the rock to put in benasso to reinforce the structure. Toxic silt was captured behind the dam and we had to clean it before spreading it on farmland. In all we did more work than the Chinese did to build the dam in the first place.

The Chinese had little need for machinery except on the larger construction projects. Men's lives and men's wages were cheap while equipment was expensive. In 1727, there were few substitutes for brawn.

The command unit was currently near the Pacific Ocean preparing the roadbed for a rail line.

Harpo had been busy making more construction drones than any command unit had ever controlled before. This meant three more computers had to be manufactured.

We had long range plans and they included transportation. One of our plans was the conquest of Mexico. This would start by collecting native Mexicans and then arming them with the muskets we took from those that recently attacked me. Some of their northern neighbours went with them to assist in evicting the Spanish. These were the older men that just wanted to fight.

Harpo had begun this portion of transportation infrastructure three years ago. The momentum had picked up as more construction drones were produced. He made bridges over rivers of the type found in my time.

At major rivers, it was necessary to make a tunnel beneath the water instead. This was the case at the Mississippi where ships with tall masts would sail up the river. In this case the tunnel had to be submerged 80 metres and long approaches made for a high speed train. This type of construction took much longer. In other cases a tunnel through a mountain was best. We tried to keep a straight course but sometimes it was better to go around some obstacles. A bridge, no matter how beautiful marred some of nature's beauty.

The former English citizens learned to make iron and then steel at my foundries. Thousands worked for me when not on the farm but many were abandoning their farms for the city. I needed a lot of steel and thirty thousand tonnes was just the start.

The produce we grew in Georgia, found ready markets all over the world. It was rail manufacturing that I was concentrating on though. Harpo could make much better track and many times faster but the people would learn little. Ceramic track was even better but the natives could not make this themselves yet and it would be just Harpo and me making it.

The construction units shaped the land and built a benasso track bed. Trusses elevated the track four metres where animals crossed or where there was a danger of the land flooding. We did not need crushed rock because we used large diameter benasso tubes that supported the track and allowed water and animals to go underneath.

The older natives sweated along with other nationalities that were laying down a double set of this track. Where there was no flooding, benasso sleepers were made and left haphazardly along the way by the construction drones.

Talk came out, as I knew it would, about the command unit, the pod, the lift units, the flyer and especially about the hologram display units. I did not confirm or deny anything but I said that the people of this country were catching up to what the mother country was like. I tried to keep the units hidden whenever possible. The existence of intelligently formed benasso components was said to be done by nebulous machines.

The people had to know about some of the tools I used and the people I felt stable enough learned about the little drones. Like the natives, they looked inside the units. This was all assisted by classes in electricity and electronics. Solenoids moved and electric motors turned. The end result was that most could see that the drones were something they could make one day.

The men and women had to make electronic tubes by hand. The standard circuits had to be altered to fit the characteristics of each of the tubes that were made simply because there was little quality control. It took time to learn. All I wanted them to know was that my work was not magical in any way.

Assay drones became common for some people and on occasion many of the drones would be in one place. This was staged because I had explain how the obviously constructed track bed had come to be. I said larger units did this work.

With just track to lay and bolt into place, we made thirty five kilometres a day on average because we worked around the clock.

At the Pacific coast, Harpo would turn south and lay rail bed on the coast of Mexico. In our data storage we had the future routes of trains so we could follow nearly the same path now.

The army would take the train to get to Mexico and the train would also bring what we needed to feed and protect the soldiers.

I could borrow some extra lift units and fly the Celeste II across the Pacific. The Celeste I size could take a messenger and then me up the river to Beijing.

My stay on the farm in China was not as pleasant as I hoped. The ladies were hesitant to have some fun and games with somebody the Emperor sent high ranking messengers too. They still cooperated but I felt as if they were loving me as a duty.

The next day I talked to Chen and found the emperors men took much of my seed grain with them. Chen had no real way of saying no and was worried about what I would say and do. There was no problem with the seeds being used, but I had not given them; they had been seized.

On the good side, the farm had been enlarged. More people had arrived to more than fill the area. I may as well start a city of paupers than try to grow food.

I made my decisions on what I wanted to bring and sent the orders through Vilchjo to Harpo. Lift units took the produce home and after a few more days I followed it. It was a short trip across the Pacific this time. The railway bed was all the way to what had been or might one day be Los Angeles. Another line started and went south near San Diego and crossed into what I knew as the old border into Mexico.

There were a few Spaniards in the area and I wondered what they thought about the roadbed. It was safe against their efforts to move it if they found it a threat. I flew the route south while I studied the land where we would lay track. While the lift units were flying our ship overland to the Pacific.

Harpo said while I was flying, "I'm in contact with only some of the natives in this area. It would be good to fly at a slower speed and much lower. The Spanish will discount what they see but not the natives.

"There are some villages in the mountains that the Spanish have not touched yet. I can communicate with them if you release a set of drones."

I had the time considering how slow the ship would be moving and did as Harpo suggested. I only had seven sets so I could not meet that many villagers.

When Harpo found a village with his sensors we would drop low and release a set. I would then smile and wave from an open entranceway. The inhabitants were either in flight or in awe but some people saw me. It was counter productive to land. It took a long time to gather the natives trust and Harpo could accomplish the same task with no danger in me getting a spear in the back.

The scenery was beautiful but then again most of the world was that way unless man had a chance to despoil it.

I released the remaining units at other large population centres. Soon I was near the old Aztec city of Tenoctitlan, which now would be called Mexico City. It was constructed on an island in a shallow lake but the Spaniards had destroyed the dikes that allowed the lake to be used for flood control.

Harpo already had drones here to gather information and to communicate with the natives so he could give suggestions. The city was large even now. This municipality was up on the plateau and the rail lines would have to climb to this height and then cross two mountain ranges to get to the city. I was going to burrow through the mountains instead.

The city in the twenty first century and the first half of the twenty second was a blight on the planet that only humans could make. The Pack had opened the mountain range to the west. Some of the water from the rain drenched coast reached the city. Flood waters from the mountains needed to be controlled. This brought disease carried by mosquitos. The Pack did not exterminate them but the insects were altered to not need blood to breed. Other methods had to be used to keep their numbers low but still fit in the scheme of life.

Mexican engineers in the twenty first century had erected wind farms in the mountains. When fusion was found these were still used. The Pack's discovery of energy from out of our universe doomed even fusion.

I flew northward then and left the mountains to the plateau. This area got progressively dryer as I went north. The Pack had worked its magic here too. Mexico and the Imperial Valley of California received water from the ocean in the pre-pack days. The vast majority of the salt was removed from it.

Plants had already been genetically altered to live with high salt concentrations and the unwanted minerals were stored in the leaves. Over time the land could be reclaimed with just this method. The consumption of water though still got very high. The Pack put in much larger pipes and desalination units to carry the life giving liquid.

Food was no problem for the people of the world. It was just the toys they wanted that hurt the environment. With the drugs the food produced to hinder conception, the population growth stopped. When people were educated enough, they voluntarily limited their numbers until the giant region was converted to forest and living space was set aside as humanity spread out and lived with nature.

The same had been true of the southern deserts of the American landmass. Here though, sediment washed into the ocean for the last few million years was recovered and cleaned. Some was used for landscaping this area and some was scattered in the high reaches of the atmosphere to regulate the amount of heat reaching the planet. The Earth started to cool and the shrinking icecaps started to grow at a slow rate.

Before I came back, the point had been reached where we regulated the temperature of the planet and could even control the weather as long as we did it in small amounts. Nature wrecked havoc if we tried too do too much.

I changed course now and again just to fly low and slow so I could wave to the natives working on the railway. It felt good to see them wave back because I could feel their love even at the altitude I was flying.

That night, I met the Celeste II flying west but I continued east at a much faster speed. At the railhead, I stopped and visited with the men working under the arc lights laying the track.

A conveyor system moved lengths of track forward and a crane placed them. Men still had to do some of the work but it was not that difficult. Another unit rode the rails that were just laid and attached the steel rails to the benasso sleepers. Progress stopped as I talked to the natives.

We had a small party and I did not have to smoke that damn pipe I had to in the first few years of my stay here.

On the way back I looked at the track under me. It had been layed under the Mississippi. The party I just had was half way to what would one day be Dallas. The boring through the Rockies toward the west coast was complete. Harpo made other tunnels just so people would not use those dedicated to train travel.

A canal was going to go across the country one day and it too would need large tunnels to link the two oceans. Some mountain lakes that now drained westward would be shifted eastward and feed the canal system. This would keep the water fresh in the canal and provide irrigation for the farmland before draining into the Mississippi.

The ship came down near the city of Piper and settled into its silo. The urban area was named after the Piper that was so instrumental in getting the Pack to the way it was. The city was on the western side of the Appalachians so the winters would not be as cold or the summers so hot. The city was still above the surrounding land but still buried into the foothills. We did not clash with the scenery.

The security team met me with Blue Eyes in the lead.

She said in faultless Esperanto, "It's about time you got back," then she hugged me. She was not as polite as my people but she certainly was demonstrative enough.

I had to speak in my own defence and said, "Harpo wanted me to say hi to some of the natives." I did not get too much further because I was dragged off to bed. I needed my sleep but I was not going to get any for a while.

For the next few days, we worked on fabricating clothing that would meet some of the expectations of the Chinese Emperor and those he kept around him. We also wanted to show that we were not going to dress as they were.

I had to take a large entourage just to appear important. This was no problem because everybody wanted to go.

When the Celeste II was near China, we boarded, Celeste III, the commuter and flew out to intercept. The commuter could take five hundred people with comfort. Since we were only going to have one unit for a while we decided to build big. This was also the unit that placed the satellites in orbit.

We descended to the Yellow Sea. In moments we moved from a space vessel to one made of wood. The computer flew the commuter back to Piper and we got the Celeste II's boilers hot then sailed toward the town of Tangjiahe to connect to a canal that would lead to the famous Grand Canal of China. The first portion was large enough for the Celeste II but the locks were too small later and the system too shallow for us.

My 'ambassadors' had to use the Celeste I type of craft. This vessel like the canons were decorated like dragons. The smoke from the stack came out the mouth of the movable head. The last was necessary so the smoke was not blown back into the firebox of the boiler.

We waited in the Yellow Sea for three days for the craft to go the short distance. Foreign craft were suspect and everybody wanted to know what was happening. The ship returned much quicker, bring somebody to clear the path.

The emperor's representatives viewed the Celeste II and were invited aboard. They now knew about steam power and they learned that some engines could be made much larger. The representatives did not want to dawdle so three of the smaller type of craft hurried to Beijing after going through Tainjin. Three of the Emperor's men and a minister stayed aboard because I would be using the radio in one of the smaller craft later.

We tied up at the imperial dock. Horse drawn carriages and some cargo wagons took us to the Forbidden City. We knew the details of the city because we had seen the images Harpo had shown us.

A chamberlain directed us to a set of apartments where we could freshen up before meeting the emperor. Vilchjo was feeding me data about what the drones found that were near Emperor Yongzheng. He was busy getting reports about us, our ships and our possible cargo.

The books I had sent to the Emperor with the cannons were searched for information on steam engines. Scholars had to learn Esperanto to do this but there were good books written in Mandarin that explained the procedure.

My ambassadors had handed in my documents along with a suggestion for royal protocol so we both knew what to expect. It had taken three hours before a suitable compromise was reached before the ship was allowed to return.

An hour after our arrival, the chamberlain asked if I was prepared to meet the emperor. He of course used all his titles which took a considerable time.

I walked down the corridor with Blue Eyes and Half Moon behind me on my right. The two men, Flute, with a lion's heart and Sky Song were on my left and behind me. They were security but also took the place of the scholars Yongzheng would have with him. They carried rolled paper plans that I wanted to give the Emperor.

The double gold sheathed doors were opened for us as we arrived at the throne room. As per the protocols, I was introduced first then each of my four companions. We did not kneel to the Emperor but we were not far into the room either.

Yongzheng in turn got off his throne and walked to me where we bowed to each other. I wanted this to be a meeting of equals if at all possible.

I said in Mandarin, "I'm very glad to meet you. I have studied your land and people but usually from afar."

Yongzheng said in Esperanto which surprised me, "I'm glad to meet you too."

I let my surprise show and smiled. "I can see that friendship will grow between us and our lands."

"Your land was unknown to me and your new land was thought to be uncivilised. I see that I was wrong."

"You were correct but we are bringing civilisation along in small steps. I've brought you a few gifts that will please your mind and make your ministers excited. May I present them here and now?"

"You may do so."

Blue Eyes handed me a paper tube. I took the end off and it hung by a string from the end. I extracted some large plans for a steam engine. Yongzheng called two ministers over to help hold the rolled out paper.

"This is the way to manufacture the type of engine seen in my small and large ship. I could have translated part of this into your language but your language lacks some of the names. The measurements are in my terms but I have instruments that are calibrated that way."

I pointed to various graphics on another document that took the place of an animation. It showed the various processes necessary for the engine to function. Other documents showed the parts in much better detail. Soon we had more ministers and guards holding drawings.

These drawings were put away and I brought out pictures and drawings of sailing ships. Others were steam operated vessels. Some were just launches that could take the smallest steam engine to tour the inland canal system or to pull smaller barges.

Still other drawings were of machinery that could employ the same engines that would pull a multi gang plough, turn a shaft in a factory, pump a river of water, dig soil from the Earth, or move a large surface vehicle piled with soil or produce.

It was only after all the drawings were shown did we get the chance to have a meal. There would be a problem because Blue Eyes and Half Moon were obviously women and not suited to eat with the men. I had explained in my articles of protocol that the women were also scholars and worthy to sit with any man. They did not look like the petite Asian woman and surely did not act like them.

We made polite conversation during the meal but when asked about the capabilities of the Celeste II I said, "Blue Eyes has piloted this vessel much more than me. I usually take the owner's cabin and study. I'm sure she could answer you better than I could."

"Your people built this ship. You do not know the specifics?"

"You raise horses and they are all different. Some shy away from a sword and some attack. Both are your horses."

He thought about it then said, "Let Blue Eyes tell me."

Blue Eyes was polite but did not keep her eyes down. Since she had been a slave for so long, she rebelled against appearing submissive. Blue Eyes boasted about the ship but tried to appear objective.

We retired to our rooms but Yongzheng and I had a more or less private talk. He also had people behind the walls ready to come out if there was treachery.

"Why did you bring me these gifts? You are not a supplicant."

"I wish to avoid trouble in the future between your country and Europe. They need the power of men when they do not have many so they make machines. China has the men and will not seek new ways of doing things. Perhaps you will see value in what I have shown you and try to do better. You can stand up to the Russians and the Ottomans better. There will be less deaths if a bully will not go after a weakling that has grown strong."

We talked on this subject for a half hour until I asked him to accompany me to the ships. He agreed and I brought Blue Eyes to stoke the boiler. We went for a short trip and then I began to warm up the radio.

When we pulled into shore I called the Celeste II and a very nervous Chinese Minister answered. I asked, "What is the weather like?"

The man answered as good as he could then I gave the microphone to Yongzheng and told him how to use it. There was a lot of incredulous talk where questions were asked that the recipient could not answer. When this became obvious, I got Blue eyes to answer Yongzheng.

It hurt the man when she said, "Our children learn of this. We think that within a generation or two we will also communicate with the images of both people as if they are separated by just a few metres."

"This is amazing. None of my people have even dreamt of something like this."

"You do not have the full set of books yet but we have not printed them all ourselves."

"How can my people learn? Can we get these books?"

I said, "I would like to open schools in your land to teach some of what I know."

"You may do this."

"I'm needed in my land but there is a way. Give me one hundred of your boys and one hundred girls that act a little like the boys. I will train them in what I know. In a few years send a thousand of each and the first group will train this second group. Most will go home but some will teach the next wave that comes.

"What is taught cannot be done in a month or even a year. Many years are required but some people can start with just the basic training. What I do will effect your land. A new group will arise that knows of what I know. You could use these people in the army to make better cannons or make radios like you just used.

"You have to find a way of doing what I offer because Russia, England, Spain and France are learning. They will attack with ships such as mine and even fly through the air to shoot your people from the air."

I paused waiting and he took the bait. "Nobody can fly."

"Would you bet one gold coin on that?"

"Yes."

"Tomorrow if it is warm enough, Blue Eyes or Half Moon will ride a kite. If it is not warm, we will wait until it is."

"We have tried that and it does not work."

"If you gather some silk and some long pieces of bamboo, you may see one of your own citizens fly."

The next day my group talked with the Chinese scholars about our drawings. Some basic ideas they were missing until they were shown. Blue Eyes gathered bamboo until she had a large frame. Four native women arrived to help her stitch the hemp cloth to the frame.

When the centre of balance was found, Blue Eyes hung her frame. It was difficult to find a high enough building. Yongzheng finally relented and Blue Eyes was allowed on the roof of the palace.

I could feel the woman's fright but I also wanted a place for women in the history of China besides as mothers. She gave a bit of false bravado after the kite was hoisted to the roof but she did not hesitate to connect her harness to the frame and hold the bar before her.

There was a hush over the square until Yongzheng signalled. Blue eyes ran to the edge and leaped into space. She dove to pick up speed then flew across the warm stones at only three metres. She clawed for altitude then went back and forth as the thermal took her higher and higher into the air.

Blue eyes tried for a height and endurance record but came back to Earth a half hour later by running towards the Emperor and myself.

The crowd was agog at what had happened and especially when it was done by a woman.

Blue Eyes came to a halt and saluted. "Mission accomplished, Sir."

"Good work Blue Eyes. I think you can go show your craft to the skeptics now."

"Yes, Sir."

Yongzheng said, "I would like to try that?"

"You may but I warn you that there are a great many deaths and accidents until you learn and even experienced people sometimes die. Blue Eyes could have died too but both of us wanted your people to see that a woman can do much more than have babies."

Within a few days, people arrived and were introduced to our group. Some were people interested in what we had or could provide them and some were people sent by the emperor to see if they were suitable for training.

We found a woman acrobat that would train under Blue eyes and the woman was the second person to fly in China. From then on silk was in great demand as others tried what we did but there were also a lot of deaths. They did not listen to the instructions or got so worried that they did not do the right thing.

The woman acrobat got a commission from the Emperor to teach what she knew.

The Emperor and I went through the canal system and to the Celeste so he could see the ship with his own eyes. We puttered around the Yellow Sea for a while then headed back to Beijing. The man wanted a ship like this. He also needed a much better canal system to get a ship like this to the capital. In the meantime his navy personnel were placed onboard and taught how to run a ship like this.

I didn't mention the seizure of my seeds but I gave a list of instructions about how to plant them and how to keep them from crossbreeding. During this talk I wanted my people to be exempt from the law concerning giving a son to the military.

A special law applying to my land allowed me to send trained people to my schools to educate the people of China. Schools had to be built in Europe but I was short of teachers. This meant that I had to teach people to be teachers.

There was no trouble finding applicants any place I wanted to teach. The good pay and the fact that I did not beat the people for making mistakes was enough. Those that learned Esperanto could command good money to teach the language to others.

A lot more books were printed in North America for sale but this did not help the poor there or here. I had built libraries in North America and had to make them big because I knew how large they would have to be one day. The construction units only put down the footings and local construction workers had to do the work. This slowed construction time from a day to a year.

I was allowed to set up libraries here but I got the emperor to build for me so he was part of what I was trying to accomplish.

Vilchjo told me of a nefarious plan hatched by Yongzheng. He summoned his relatives and introduced me to the women he wished to marry off. Chinese morality was dictated that I be nice but not start making love to them unless I was serious about finding a wife. I had avoided this so far and didn't see the need for children.

I tried to get Blue Eyes married off. She still had hopes on getting me no matter how many times I said I was not ready for anybody.

Yongzheng would talk about some of his female relatives and I had to play the game. He would say how passive and obedient they were and I would say I wanted an equal not a slave.

Other times he shaded his words to say how someone's daughter was too outgoing and I had to meet her.

The railway across North America was complete and the crew were now heading south. I figured it was time to go. Yongzheng hustled up the rest of his relatives in the chance that one or even more than one would catch my eye. They did but not a wives.

It was two days before our departure that I felt uncomfortable. I did not know the cause and I tried to ignore it. It would not go away and I said, "Vilchjo, something's wrong. I don't know what. It's something tickling my empathy."

"I will be more vigilant and warn the others."

The others wore a tiny implant in their mastoid bone and another near their larynx. They could hear and talk but not appear to be doing so.

Wu Lian was the regional governor of Sichuan where I had my farm. When he arrived to be introduced, I was polite to him. He soon introduced his wife and then his four sons and five daughters. I even got to meet his grandchildren. Yongzheng didn't think this was a manly thing to do but I liked children.

The feeling of something wrong got stronger and then stayed constant. It got so bad I had Vilchjo search a lot more diligently but he found nothing amiss. When the Wu family left, the effect faded too. I met three more families but I was distracted still.

When I could I escaped and used the information Vilchjo gave me to search out the family. When I got to their quarters, the feeling got stronger. I simply had to find out what was happening.

While I was trying to think of a way to search the apartment, a door opened and a girl looked out. She did not look anywhere else but directly at me. I could feel the link now. It was much stronger than what I had with Juvela and Orabela. This happened to my people but very rarely was it this strong. Herb had this attraction to Piper and Kimberly. I may not have it as bad but it was bad enough.

The young woman had not taken her eyes off of me so she must feel at least some of what I felt. I moved closer and whispered, "What is your name?"

She looked at me for a long time. I could feel her need to be with me.

Finally she said, "Pang Chan Juan."

I had to think of why I whispered then I knew that she was a servant or a slave. This could get difficult so I said, "I will be back, Chan Juan."

I ordered Vilchjo to monitor Chan Juan and the family she was with. I gave the link I felt as an excuse.

The emperor received me quickly and saw that something was amiss, "What is bothering you, Michjo?"

"Very rarely, two people meet that somehow fit together. I have found somebody that fits but she is the slave or a servant of the Wu family. The girl's name is Pang Chan Juan."

"It is not right to marry a slave, especially a prince. What would your family say?""

"We are of two different cultures. What has happened is very rare. My father would approve."

"I will talk to the Wu family on your behalf."

I waited anxiously as a messenger summoned the governor. The man came in wondering what was wrong. He prostrated himself and waited orders.

Yongzheng said, "An odd thing has happened. The gods have made a joke on Prince Michjo. He has felt something odd about someone in your household. Tell me about Pang Chan Juan."

The man kept his head down and said, "She is but the daughter of one of my gardeners. She is polite and thoughtful and now tends to my grandchildren."

"Would you allow her to enter into my employ?"

"— yes most illustrious — " the man went on but the answer was what I wanted.

Yongzheng summoned Chan Juan and she came running behind the guard. She came into the room and fell very low as if to hide beneath the floor. She shook in fright. I wanted to go to her but I had to stay back. I sent what comforting thoughts I could and hoped that she could feel some of them.

Yongzheng said, "Your master has given you to me and I am giving you to Prince Michjo."

Chan Juan did not acknowledge this. She was too frightened.

Somehow I also felt anger and it came from Wu. I tried to narrow down the reason but I could not do so.

I said, "Wu Lian, I will recompense you for your loss." The man's anger only grew. "What is it that angers you? I am not an evil or cruel man."

Wu did not answer so Yongzheng said, "Why are you angry? She is just a female."

Wu went through a long verbal dance until Yongzheng had to ask again. Wu finally said, "I am obliged to provide people for the army. There is now less people to choose from."

Yongzheng thought for a minute and said, "Those that teach will also add to your total."

I could feel Wu's anger getting less but there was more. I said, "I can feel anger when it is directed at me. You are relieved that no extra burden has been placed on you but you are still angry. What is it that angers you?"

Yongzheng had to order him to answer me. The man said, "I have to provide food as well as men."

I listened for his answer and said, "That may be true but there is more."

"There is no more."

"I know there is."

Yongzheng dismissed the man and said to me, "I appointed him as a governor because he is strong. I would watchout for him."

"Would he harm the people on my farm just to hurt me?"

"It is possible."

"What rights do I have as a landowner to protect my people from somebody that can call on the army to do what he will not do with his hands?"

"You can fight the army but I need my men."

"Perhaps I should find other land and move my people. I do not like to kill and I hate to kill many."

"You have to learn not to let your weaknesses show." That reminded me of Sun Tzu and his Art of War.

I said, "Thank you for what you have done. Chan Juan is so nervous that she has to pee."

"You better take her away then."

Chan Juan followed four metres behind me until we got in my apartments. I turned to her and said, "I'm sorry for disturbing your life." She just stared at me, not knowing what was happening.

I said, "Once in a great while two people meet that are fated to be together always. The feeling I have for you is that way. I can also sense how you feel. You are suddenly homeless and worried but I will not hurt you and you now have a home."

I got her to sit on a chamber pot and I had to leave the room. She was too nervous to do anything until I got the med unit to make her relax. By this time others had come back.

Blue Eyes said, "How come she's here?"

"The long and the short of it is that she and I are linked somehow. This is the person that was making me uncomfortable."

"The way you look — Are you going to marry her?"

"I can't see a way around it and I don't even want to try to find a way. She's part of me."

In a few minutes I sat down with Chan Juan and said, "How do you feel now?"

She did not speak or even look at me so I had to add, "I asked a question. Chinese women are supposed to obey. Tell me how you feel."

She finally got out, "I am fine, Master."

"Why are you nervous?"

I had to wait until she said, "You talk to the Emperor like a friend."

"I think he is a friend. Why do you think Wu Lian is so angry?"

"I have no idea, Master."

"I can feel people's emotions. Tell me the truth, Chan Juan."

"That is the truth, Master."

"That is not the truth. We are going to stay here until I hear it."

It took a while but I found out that her father owed Wu some money and Wu took Chan Juan as part of the payment. I questioned her more until she broke down and told me everything. She was taken to Wu's bed and his sons had done the same thing.

Wu was a violent man and would take it out on her family when he returned home. Upon more questioning, I found that violent meant the family would be tortured to death.

That night, our flyer came down and we got onboard with a sedated Chan Juan. There was not enough room, so we flew to a desolate area and shifted over to the commuter.

Chan Juan didn't really know where she was. We flew to the Sichuan Basin and found the governor's house. Nearby was a village which belonged to the governor. I didn't like what I had to do but I stunned the village.

Chan Juan had groggily pointed out all her relatives. We began to fill the commuter with the people because everybody in the village was related. We had to more than fill the vehicle.

We flew to the governors house because two sisters worked there too. Everybody was stunned and we had to get a lift unit into the house to raise the bar on the door. I got only a few steps into the house before I felt uncomfortable. Chan Juan was outside and there could only be one reason. I found the young girls and then the two sisters. The last I was compelled to carry and put in the commuter.

Chan Juan told me that not all the people in the house were servants. The older members of the Wu family were put aside for the moment.

When the house was emptied, we shifted back to the flyer and sent the commuter to North America to be greeted by my friends.

The med units came out and awoke the guards. Moments later they heard a screech that was louder then anything they had seen before. In a moment they saw a giant holographic bird land on the house and start to rip it apart with its beak and talons. The guards fled but the bird continued to peck away. The lift units threw the debris far away as if the bird was looking for food.

The sleeping members of the Wu family were carefully put back in the debris and covered.

A half hour later the village was ripped apart too but strangely, none of the animals were eaten or killed. Large tracks were seen on the ground.

With this done, we flew back to Beijing and tried to get some sleep. Chan Juan and I slept much better when we held each other.

The next day we cleaned up. Chan Juan was worried about a strange dream she had. We had a good bath in hot water then the detail went out to the town to finish buying souvenirs and get Chan Juan some additional clothing.

I said goodbye Yongzheng and we actually hugged each other. The Chinese did not like to touch. After wishing each other the best wishes, we left. It was easy sailing because the Emperor gave us carte blanche.

When we got back to the Celeste II the Chinese Navy had to be evicted. Those on board knew enough and had the books so I gave Yongzheng the boats.

I wrote a letter telling him that he could find a good use for them and asked him to teach the youngsters so they had a chance.

We sailed for four hours while Chan Juan sat open mouthed then stayed close to me in fear. Blue Eyes had to get her to investigate the ship with her.

Half Moon said, "I saw you staring at her sisters. Was it the same thing?"

I was still flustered and said, "Yes. This happened to an ancestor of mine. He married both sisters."

"What's wrong with that? A Ahniyvwiya man may do that. Some have three wives and not all are sisters."

"I know that. I just don't know what to do. I was a father trying to help my country get past its infancy and now I'm linked to some women I do not even know. I'm afraid."

"The women of my tribe know that and we look out for you." I gave a weak smile and she said, "Does this mean we don't have any more fun?"

"Not unless you want to quit."

When we were out of sight of land and any ship, Chan Juan was sedated once more. The now empty commuter returned and we boarded it as the lift units elevated the Celeste II back to North America. This time she was going to take a cruise down the shore of the Pacific.

The med units had gone all over Chan Juan many times. There was a multitude of things wrong. None were incurable but she was pregnant.



-------

Chapter 6


I agonised over this for so long, that we landed in Piper. We got out of the ship with our luggage and gifts but I was still stuck. I carried Chan Juan to my home and bathed her and put her to bed while I thought.

Deer I thought might have the answer and I found her but had to wake her up. She rubbed her eyes and invited me in. "What is troubling you, Michjo? It must be serious."

I told her about the linkage that was sometimes found and she mentioned that she has heard of this too but never met the people involved. I had to finish the story then.

"So this woman has another man's child in her. You do not know if she loves you or not. You do not know if you love her or her two sisters. You do not know if the woman wants the child or not. You do not know what the women will think if she makes the decision one way or another. You do not know how her people will view this."

"That about covers it."

"What does Harpo say?"

"Abort without her knowing."

We sat and drank some tea then Deer said, "The woman will love you and you will love her."

I felt relieved.

"Chan Juan will want your children. She will not want the child forced upon her. Harpo says that the Chinese have drugs that will cause abortion so this is an option. Are the other two pregnant?"

"I have no idea."

The gym now held 768 people. The adults were still partially sedated because they would get very upset very quickly. The native and the Scots children took the other Chinese children on a tour. This was frightening but children were more adaptable.

The two girls, Jaio and Wei were able to move around with little drug assist. They were together in a corner when I saw them and they immediately looked at me.

Deer said, "I know which two they are. They know who you are too."

I walked over to them and they stood. I sat down instead and said, "Please sit with us."

Jaio was thirteen and Wei was twelve. This was still of marriageable age in China.

When they sat, I said, "Hello, my name is Michjo and this is Deer. A few days ago, I met your sister Chan Juan in Beijing."

They did not know where their sister was but only knew that she had left a while ago with the Wu family. I did not know this for sure but it seemed plausible.

"Once in a while, two people meet that fit together." I used my fingers to show the fit. "Some times the people fit much better." Again I used my fingers. Once in a great while, the people meet that fit very well. I guess it is possible for people to fit perfectly but I have not heard of this."

I asked, "Do you understand this Jaio?"

It took a while but she said as she looked down, "I have heard of this."

"Wei?"

"I understand your words, Master. Is this happening to us?"

"Yes, both of you and your sister Chan Juan. I do not know why this happens but it does. Some wise men have talked for years. They mention many facts but nothing I can see or feel."

The girls wanted to ask more but they were conditioned not to do so. I said as carefully as I could, "I have no wives, concubines or slaves. We are linked even if we do not want this."

This made the girls twitch in worry.

"Would the two of you marry me if your sister is one of my wives?"

Jaio nodded her head quickly and then so did Wei.

"Then come with me. We have to talk to your sister."

We went to my apartment and they found Chan Juan sleeping on a thick pad. They did not approach her but just watched.

Deer took a hand of each and said in odd sounding Chinese, "Come with me to clean up then we will see your sister."

The girls were docile and went with Deer. She got in the large shower and cleaned the girls very well and did herself the same way. Wei took it upon herself to clean Deer.

When they came out they were naked. The girls tried to hide themselves with their hands.

Deer said in Esperanto, "I think you are very lucky with the young one."

"I think I'm lucky with any of them."

The girls were happy to get under the covers on each side of their sister.

I sat on the floor a few metres away after putting my med unit on Chan Juan's arm. In a few seconds she awoke and immediately looked for me before she spotted her sisters. She wanted to ask questions but she didn't.

I began my story again about there being no magic but science and wondered myself about this attraction. I mentioned a ship that flew but they could not understand this.

With a hint from Vilchjo, I used my hands to make a shadow on the wall of a dog and other animals.

"I went to the home of Wu Lian and pretended that a giant bird came down to the house. I destroyed the house but everybody even the cooks were taken out first. I made everybody in the village sleep and put them into my ship. The ship came here and all of you were taken off.

"Wu Lian will find from his guards that everybody has disappeared. He cannot hurt you or your family. I brought you here so he couldn't."

There was still no questions so I asked Wei, "What did I ask you."

There was a lot of hesitation then she said, "You asked us if all three of us will be your wives."

Chan Juan was not shocked at all. "Chan Juan, will you be my wife?"

She nodded her head.

"I want each of you to look at me and say what you want."

Chan Juan had to screw up her courage and then look at me. "I will be your wife." She immediately looked down.

"Then I take you for my first wife. Jaio?"

"I will marry you." She looked up then to see what I would say.

"I will take you for my second wife."

Wei did not have to be asked, she looked me in the eye and said, "I want to be your wife too."

"And I want you to be my third wife."

I got a big smile.

I moved closer and kissed each one. They did not know of this gesture. I put a med unit on Jaio and found her body actively fighting some diseases. She was not pregnant. Wei was not worried as much and I found her gaining her health and thankfully not pregnant. All of the girls had sex in both lower openings and this too was being healed.

Deer made a deliberate noise and I said, "Our chamber pot is odd. It is attached to the floor. Just sit on it and do what you have to do. There is something like moss you can use or you can use the water. Chan Juan can show you how it works. I am going to leave so the three of you can talk. There is nobody here that will harm any of you in any way. I'll bring food later."

I walked out with Deer. She said, "Some are not too old and one is young enough to learn. I know that other men cannot handle a job like that."

"I'll try. I need a Ahniyvwiya grandmother to take care of the girls. They are too shy."

"I will try but it's hard to talk that tongue. Teach them the way we speak."

"Will they learn of Harpo?"

"Everybody will eventually but I do not want religion to cloud the issue for a while. The Chinese are very superstitious.

Sixty five percent of the village population were children. 271 were adults. Some were very old and some not much better than children. Harpo helped by forming a hologram and telling the adults the way it was going to be. I could not have done that if my life depended on it. Strangely the adults accepted their place in the scheme of things.

Chen Lee was a man of forty seven. His old wife had died and he found a younger one in the village. She was with him now along with their two young children. I was going to talk to him but thought it better to wait and see.

They were marched outside to work in the fields as if they were serfs but they understood the routine. They liked the tools they were issued. A pair of construction drones began building a new apartment complex.

The natives were waiting for them and would get angry when they found they had to share with the Chinese. They also had to share with other tribes because I was trying to break their customs of fighting.

In two weeks the kidnapped Chinese were used to seeing the hologram. It was a shock when they saw me walk through my own image. By that time they knew I was not evil but their superstitions would not let them react rationally.

Four days after bringing Chan Juan home, I initiated sex with her. She was unresponsive as she thought a good woman should be. I felt her need but I could not get her to respond even when I used my lips and fingers. She was tight and I thought it was my size that was making her uncomfortable.

After three attempts I got the med unit to help me out. This was very illegal in my time and only used if the woman wished it. Chan Juan found herself on fire and orgasmed repeatedly and would not stop.

Jaio was similar to her sister and I used the stimulant. She then responded as good as Chan Juan.

Wei was young but many girls in my time sought out older males. Both of us felt compelled to join and with her I did not need any chemical help though her orgasms were not as intense as her sisters.

The next day I got the three girls to join me instead of watching from the sidelines. Chan Juan and Jaio needed a little help and I gave some to Wei too because she wanted to try.

The three girls drew strength from each other. The drug running through their systems made them push hard to get the stimulation they needed. Wei was the first to sit on Jaio's face and then start to please her sister. I wondered if this was an aberration caused by the drug, they had simply lost their inhibitions or they had done this when young and wanted to do it now. I was sure they would keep this a secret from any man, even their husband.

It was a tiring night for me. When I woke up, I pulled Chan Juan around and planted her face between Wei's legs while I slipped into Chan Juan's vagina. I did not let this lie and moved the girls around so they pleased each other as I pleased them. It was very late in the day when I stopped but I was fairly sure the girls would not retrogress.

That night I did it again and there was only a little hesitation until they started.

Deer had a talk to Chan Juan and found that the girl did not know about the child nor want it. She was ashamed for getting pregnant and worried if I would kick her out for being unfaithful.

The procedure was simple but usually only used in the non-Pack countries.

We celebrated New Years the way it was in my time. The natives had celebrated with me because they like to dance, sing, drink and eat. The Chinese were now broken up and having to deal with new customs. They celebrated with me.

Chinese New Year starts with the very first New Moon of the new year and ends on the full moon 15 days later. The 15th day of the new year is called the Lantern Festival, which is celebrated at night with lantern displays and children carrying lanterns in a parade.

Now it was the natives of North America turn to learn from the Chinese. The drink, food, music and goodtime was a good enough reason to enjoy this holiday too.

The Scots and the English had their Christmas and I did not begrudge their holiday though it had far more connotations than the Chinese New Year had.

The men that had been forced into the army were now anxious to fight, even the Spanish that were going to fight their own people. They knew I tried to avoid death and only wanted a better world for our children. That term was more important to me now because I was thinking of altering my body to make viable sperm cells.

Since acquiring Louisiana, small groups of soldiers had gone out to talk to the people of the settlements and post notices. Most of my ambassadors had been the soldiers I had captured lead by a native. They all wore my uniform and were scrupulously polite. Another small group stayed outside the walls in case of trouble. They did not have a heavy cannon but a cart with a load of light rockets.

The locals were angry at hearing how their king and country had abandoned them. They cheered up when they learned they would not loose their land. The larger centres also had to have their books examined. This was to get a record of what land was held in private hands and what was not. It also served to find what taxes had been collected but not delivered.

Small booklets gave the changes the new citizens would find. I promised mechanised farming that needed far less manpower. I also offered to buy back slaves.

The squads were less than subtle by using the radio to contact the group outside the gates, Piper, Halifax, Paris or London.

In only a few instances did a military commander choose to fight. The group outside the gate showed him how fast their walls could be pierced.

Harpo had layed out the routes for each of the squads and provided intelligence on the number of people they would meet. This information was easily found through the use of our satellites.

When the French settlements along the gulf coast were covered, they began with the Spanish. The only difference was that we said we were seizing the land in reprisal for the attack on us.

There was a lot more fighting but we were prepared for this. Supplies and men were only as far away as the railway. Some towns were too strong to be taken by a squad and many more men were sent.

We began our real military offensive in the Gulf on the first of February 1728. The trains carried the troops, the weapons and the vehicles. Some of the larger town were as much as 500 kilometres from the rail.

We usually used barges if possible or cut roads for the equipment. Sometimes precast benasso was used to make temporary bridges to support the vehicles or the trains.

There was little fighting. The garrisons ran and the local natives were happy to give us a hand as a civic responsibility.

Small detachments were left. Harpo looked out for them and gave them advice by the subterfuge of saying he was in the town as a spy and looking for problems.

When the rail line to the Pacific had finished, trains carried soldiers to the Celeste II when we were finished with it. They went up and down the coast but there were few settlements. Ships were chased and informed of the change in ownership but otherwise left alone.

The Celeste showed the flag from what was San Francisco to the tip of the Baja Peninsula. This neck of land was only partially populated anyway. Most of the action was in chasing ships that could not be seen except from close by or from orbit.

It took only ten hours to get across the country if we did not have to stop. Harpo used the satellites to check on the track to find hazzards or attempted vandalism. In two months there were no sizable Spanish communities left. They now flew the flag of Mu.

Near the first of April we went south into what had been Mexico in my time. The natives had prepared the way.

Mazatlán was the first test. The city was ordered to surrender. They were given the terms which basically they stopped most of their brutal excesses and accepted our garrison. They did not like the terms.

Rock or adobe walls were proof against our black powder rockets but the war head was now something much stronger. It would have gone through a metre of steel.

We stood out of range or behind some hills to fight. When the wall fell, teargas was used. The troops moved in wearing masks and made short work of the garrison.

For the next few days the outlying settlements were informed about the new situation and given the same terms as Mazatlán.

We seized all the weapons and powder in the fort and destroyed as much of the wall as we could. Now the Spanish had to worry that the natives they had abused for so long might come back and seek revenge.

The church tried to ask for favours but considering what it did over the years, this was not going to happen.

Guadalajara was next and was a harder nut to crack. Our supply line was 5,000 kilometres long but it took only a day for a train to arrive. When Guadalajara was taken we moved on to León then back to the main line and hit Acapulco, the Spanish shipyard.

With Harpo feeding us intelligence and laying rail bed, we took Mexico in only a year and a half. We then moved down the isthmus to Columbia.

Spain was not idle and sent ships and troops but we knew all about them even before they left Spain. Most of the time we sunk the ships while in Spain so they could not even leave. The Spanish crown purchased powder or made their own but it usually exploded. They tried to rent British and French ships but after a few sank, nobody else wanted to rent to them.

I lent Britain and France money and they lent it to Spain but only for surety that was backed up by land they owned that was not in the New World.

I was not taking part in the battles but in Europe, India, China or even in Louisiana. In a turn about I introduced the radio to Europe. Newspapers were set up and published news that was right from the battle front. This kind of information was never available before.

The radio was introduced to Germany and used as a sort of telephone where soldiers on the front could talk to their family that had not seen them for over a year.

King George I was an autocrat here but he did not bother me in any way. He knew that soon he would be restricted here as he was in Britain.

Chan Juan, Jaio and Wei slowly changed to more dominant women. Deer had to do a lot of coaxing to get them this far. They did not stay near me as much as I liked because of assassination attempts by all sorts of groups. The church saw me as their number one enemy and branded me the Antichrist.

I had to fight this with even more education because the common people that didn't know any better. Since they fought openly, I gave the people facts about the clergy.

The clergy then used the faithful to fight me. These people were nothing more than a mob of fanatics. Like a mob teargas or puke gas worked. When they tried to be subtle, the local governments captured and then prosecuted them. On occasion I could prove that the church was an accessory to this and forced the country to enforce its own laws.

The members of the various governments were not sure but they were worried I might be the Antichrist the church spoke of. To appease them, I offered them tours of my facilities and even offered them to see the front in Central America and South America.

They sent representatives to a town I founded called Jacksonville. It happened to be where Jacksonville was in the future. Construction drones had done a good job of making a good port that would protect the ships from all but the most violent storms during hurricane season.

The representatives rode 3,000 kilometres across the country at 240 kilometres an hour. The train only stopped to get water and fuel along the way. They then had a 4,000 kilometre trip south along the isthmus to the plains of Columbia.

Along the way they went over many bridges but the one over the Panama Canal was the most spectacular. The lakes and rivers in the area were now cradled in benasso and the ships had more than enough clearance to sail under them. The railway and the roads went high over the sea level waters below. The arch bridge had a span of two kilometres.

The Spanish tried to kill me on many occasions. With the help of my own security force and both Haropo and Vilchjo I was relatively safe.

I offered railways to the governments of Britain and France. Louis was having a difficult time with his countrymen so I took partners in France as long as they cooperated more with Louis. In Britain I took the money of the common man to give him a chance to benefit from what was sure to happen.

By the time 1730 came around, I had schools and teaching hospitals all over the world. China and India had bright people but the majority of the population was not yet hungry enough to learn more.

Yongzheng sent some of his relatives to the school and then sent bright young men too. The bright young women had to go to North America to break out of their mould so they could have a chance to excel.

Yongzheng said to me when I was visiting, "I heard two disturbing reports from the area near your land." I just gave the man a small grin. "First the governor's home is attacked by a giant bird that proceeded to eat all the villagers but strangely avoided eating or even killing any of Wu's family."

I offered an excuse by saying, "Perhaps they were not tasty."

"That could be. Just last year Wu decides to attack your lands. He got very near to your property when a giant bird swoops down to the front of the army and picks Wu up to the clouds and then drops him."

Your man Zu Chen walks to the army as if he were the Emperor. He looks into the hole made by Wu and then says that the army can visit your farm but has to be polite to the people living there."

I said, "That is one of the things I admire about the Chinese people. They can be very polite."

"They can be. What about the bird?"

"I will not talk about it except to say that Mu is much older than China. We have had much longer to learn. What your people are now learning will allow them to match our learning some day."

He thought on this then said, "The woman Pang Chan Juan had two sisters in the home of Wu Lian."

"Let me say that she is not mourning."

Yongzheng thought on this and said to change the topic. "You are costing me a lot of gold."

I didn't know what he was talking about but I said, "Change is costly."

He said, "I have less silk to sell. The people choose to fly."

"Then you are going to have to lose more production and let more silkworms mature. I published two books on engines and another is due to be printed. Some bright young man or woman will see that a motor will keep them up long enough to go a great distance.

"If a wise Emperor, I know, thinks of this then he can send some of his army into the skies to search out invaders or even find smugglers."

"You cost me more gold but at lest you give me a way to recoup it."

The seed that had been seized from my farms was not eaten even now. Potatoes though were seeing an unexpected growth in this country and unlike wheat or rice could be eaten if the eyes were planted. I had given Yongzheng seeds for the other crops so they could be disbursed.

I spent lavishly in all countries to save all the old books. History was important to man. The church though had been burning books for well over a thousand years so there were few to be had.

Most countries took the hint and required all doctors to take examinations or they would not get a parchment saying they could treat patients. The patients soon learned who was competent and I encouraged them to seek redress through the courts.

The schools in North America had been following my books longer than in other areas. Some of these men and even women worked in various kinds of engineering fields.

I made giant steel mills in many countries to make the track that was being laid completely by people across portions of Europe. It was not done as well as in North America but it would do until there was more time to build it better.

Chemical factories grew to produce soap, plastic, rubber and some types of fertiliser and pesticides. The last two could get out of hand so its use had to be monitored.

The schools had students from every country imaginable. Most would go home and teach their countrymen what they learned. If they taught exclusively in Esperanto then I subsidised them.

The majority of the people did not see electronics as witchcraft now. I capitalised on this by making vacuum tube computers. Transistors had 'just been invented' and were seen as promising.

Robotics was studied by many students. The universities at my time followed an old custom of building devices that fought others for supremacy. Mine were just batteries, switches and motors. It was the logic and common sense I wanted seen. One day they could make their own drones and very few people would see this as magic.

The war in South America had ended in the summer of 1734. Spain had gone into bankruptcy and I was the principle creditor. A new rebellion started in Spain and ended with the country turning into the newest republic by the next year.

I was just tidying up the loose ends of the start of a global economy when Harpo broke in on my talk to a group of entrepreneurs. "Sir, a group of ships are approaching the planet." Before I could ask more, he said, "They are decelerating at sixty four point three gravities. Their zero point will be at the location this planet will be."

I was stunned. I needed time to think so I said to the audience I was talking to, "I just got some important news. You will have to excuse me." I hurried out of the room and to an office I had in the building.

Harpo already had a holographic representation of the solar system projected and the data displayed as to the probable place the ships had come from. I had known of four alien encounters in our past. The last two had been in the 1940s and the 1950s. The others were only in records the Pack had uncovered at archeological digs.

I had no weapons unless I counted using the singularity to expel radiation at them. It would be certain that these visitors had some type of shielding to protect them.

I had a chance to think of my three wives and six children before I said, "Harpo, hail them on our long distance communicator. Tell them — " they probably did not know our language or the way we processed data. "Send them a simple graphic of us."

"Yes, Sir."

I did not get to think about too much when I heard a woman's voice communicating through the interface in my mind.

"You are a hard man to find, Michjo Stewart."

I had heard that voice before. Then the answer hit me hard. I did not know how it was possible. "Is this Piper Compton?"

"That's right sweetie. We've been chasing you down for quite a few years."

"I'm sorry. I did what I thought was best."

"That's all right. We learned a lot and maybe we have a better chance to reform the world this time. Harpo tells me you have been a busy boy."

"Yes ma'am. I've got good doctors and best of all, people use a septic system."

Piper was amazing. I was petrified one minute then worried I was a mass murderer. She calmed my fears from near the orbit of Mars. She got me to talk about what I had done though she already had the information from the computers.

She kept asking for details until before I knew it shuttle craft were leaving the ships that were now in a parking orbit.

This was very traumatic for me and it would be the same for the people here. I took Piper's advice and had Harpo warn everybody that some of my family 'from Mu' were arriving to check what I had done to prepare for them.

Six craft landed inside a large ring of waiting people. Two of the vehicles were larger than the commuter but more boxy and made for travel in space.

My mind was twitching because I could feel many people searching through my memories until only one remained. The struts under the landers retracted then the doors slid open. People in the coveralls I had first worn on the planet jumped out. They felt their excitement to being here.

One woman that look about forty five, nimbly jumped down than reached up and took a child in her arms before walking to me. This had to be Piper. She was 237 when I Left my time and I celebrated her birthday for the last fourteen years.

Piper walked unerringly to me with the child in her arms. My wives were beside me with the children standing or in their arms. I tried my best for the family not to project fear but I was deathly afraid.

I heard a voice in my mind. It bypassed my interface. "Don't worry, sweetie. I said I was not angry at you."

I thought to her, "I'll try not but it's hard."

"I understand." Then she said verbally, "Hello Michjo. Will you introduce me to your family?"

The children were not afraid, because I painted pictures of the original pack and they hung in the art gallery along with those of anybody else that chose to contribute. My children recognised the faces.

I tried my best but Chan Juan had to take over. I felt like such a fool.

Only after we talked for a few minutes did I see Kimberly and then Herb walking this way. I was shocked again wondering if I could have a chance to meet them.

The two came directly to me with smiles on their faces. Kimberley simply hugged me the way we did in my time. She spoke verbally, "It's nice to finally meet you Michjo. We had a lot of trouble."

"I'm sorry. I did what I thought was best for everybody."

"Don't worry. We are not angry at you. You gave us problems but also a solution to another problem that would have taken us half a century to answer."

I did not know what she meant so I kept my mouth shut. I was encouraged to do the introductions again and Kimberly picked up my youngest. I knew she was searching for problems but I kept my family safe.

When Kimberly stepped aside, Herb hugged me. It felt good like a grandfather in a way.

"Hello Michjo. I think you do have some of my blood line in you."

"We were never sure."

"I was, I checked the records as soon as I knew."

"You did?"

"I always worry about my children then my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. That was one of the reasons we made the command units so good. Part of it was to protect the planet but more was used to protect my family."

"We never knew."

"Some were told but they chose not to tell the family.

I got a chance to meet all of the original Pack because they all came down to the planet. I was so pleased at this and wondered how I could get rooms for everybody. I needn't of worried because Wei was offering them our rooms and we would take ones down the hall. Ours were no bigger, just better decorated.

The shuttles went back into orbit and more people descended but they put up temporary structures. The citizens of Piper were very curious especially the children. The Pack did not mind and even tried to get the children to help and feel that they were of assistance.

The news had gone out as to who had arrived and thousands of people had arrived by train. I did not have enough temporary structures but some came from orbit.

During the big party we had, Piper pulled me to my apartment. She said mentally, "I guess, you'd like to know what happened once you left us?"

"It did cross my mind."

"There was a spectacular surge that burst the dam and evaporated much of the water in the area."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

"It's alright Michjo. Relax."

When I calmed down she said, "There was a big investigation and I mean really big. Having a singularity disappear is not to be taken lightly. Your family gave us all the data they had on the situation. Harpo just confirmed what we already knew."

I just nodded as I thought of my family back in time.

"The investigation had involved most of the Pack members but it was when we found odd things starting to happen that we knew we were under the gun."

"What happened?"

"Nothing major, just the fabric of space and time was falling apart."

"What!"

"You already suspected this. Once we deduced this we knew for a fact that you went back in time. We had hoped that you would just make a fork and the event would leave us alone but it didn't."

"What did you do?"

"To continue to exist, we had to leave the space and time that was our home. The entire Pack stayed on this problem until we had a solution. Basically we repeated what had happened to you."

"An explosion?"

"We did it in space and we controlled it much better. We knew that if this worked, we may not be able to come back. We called all the Pack members to work on the Celeste and other ships. We felt we had about eight months at that point but we did not want to cut the margin too thin."

"What happened on Earth?"

"I'll get to that in a moment. Everybody on Earth was doomed unless they left with us. Let's face it, most people lead a shallow existence at best. There was little space on the ships even though they were large. The Pack went into stasis so they would need no resources other than some energy.

The world did not know what was happening but we dug through some people's mind and got them to come with us to orbit. They went into stasis too. We basically gathered all we could then performed our experiment. We did a lot of things wrong and a lot of things right. We did not get a fix on Earth so when we recovered, we did not know where we were."

"Where did you go?"

"Roughly 320,000,000 light years from this galaxy."

"What!"

"That's right. There are a lot of galaxies that look like ours and few of them we could see the spiral arms. It was Bobby that found something odd. It was a trail of neutrinos. They were a kind we had not found before. They lead to what was our fifth choice for our galaxy."

"The Celeste could not travel that fast to get here."

"We used your method again but we learned more the next time. We ended up lost again until we found the neutrinos. All in all we jumped eleven times. We had a beautiful drive to move us from galaxy to galaxy but we could not harness it enough to get it to work within one galaxy.

"We needed to think and we did not have enough brain power. Missy can find missing articles and Joy can tell us about the history of an object. We worked on their ability until we by luck more than design, we found a habitable planet."

I was worried now. I did not want the Pack to leave. They could take care of all the major problems and I could dig canals and clean rivers.

Piper quickly said, "The planet was cold and had a bad orbit. At the moment it was warm enough for us to congregate and think on our problem. We stayed a little more than two years. Most of that time was rebuilding the drives and our power coupling. We experimented on a small ship and it worked fine but needed to be tweaked.

"We went back to space and back into stasis."

"How long were you gone?"

"Subjectively about twenty three years."

"That was longer than I was here."

"We had to play with time as a dimensional variable. In a while we could travel within the galaxy but we did not know where we were presently. This took years alone and we found that the arm we were aiming for was the wrong one.

"In the end, we found the right stars to point us to Earth."

"Did you find any habitable planets that were good."

"Joy and Missy did but we left them."

"Why? You could have picked any of them."

"Michjo." Her mental voice was so soothing. "This is our home and besides we wanted to find out what happened to you. You might one day try to go back and destroy time once more."

"I wouldn't do that. This is my home now."

"I was joking, Michjo. We wanted to confirm our equations and that could not be done without finding Harpo. Most of us are linked to this planet and even if we left, we wanted to know that we could get back."

"Does that mean you will be leaving?"

"We don't know yet. The Pack would want to vote on this. The situation may have altered so that we can stay and help before going." I relaxed at hearing this.

Piper said, "It was never easy in our time either. We changed society to avoid conflict. We ended up producing a world of drones. The utopia we made was a trap. Perhaps greed has to be harnessed but then it would not be utopia."

I said, "Man is adaptable. He can fit in somehow and still not destroy himself."

"He would fit in better if he did not have an education and lived in a cave with his empathy left intact."

"You don't mean that!"

"Maybe not. I had a lot more years dealing with normals. We think that one day we can be like what some fiction writers portrayed. A ball of cognisant energy that could go anywhere they wanted, live for eternity while trying to find the very last secrets our universe has to give."

"You said there were different universes."

"That may be fun to explore too one day."


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The End
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Posted:  2008-04-06
Last Modified: 2008-06-20 / 10:45:56 am
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