R E T R O S T A R
D I R E C T O R Y
A N D
L I N K I N G
P A G E
RETROSTAR, OR, THE CIRCULAR WEB:
Chronicles of a Twin Earth, Sun, and Solar System Under Siege
Dedicated to Gabriel Tall Chief who first blew the horn and to M.G.Y. who couldn't hear it...
Vol. I, Fatal Convergence by Gabriel Tall Chief, Vol. II, Cloud and Avalanche by Gabriel Tall Chief, Vol. III, Battles of the DUBESOR (mostly on-line, with CHRONICLE FIFTY-NINE, "The Blind Man Who Could See," now available) by Gabriel Tall Chief, Vol. IV, Lost Chronicles, Mystery Chronicles, and Unchronicles by Horace Brave Scout, Vol. V, Beyond the Rapture by Horace Brave Scout, Vol. VI, Natal Convergence by Horace Brave Scout Vol. VII, Final Wars...Convergence at Orion by Horace Brave Scout
WELCOME TO THE TWIN EARTH(S)!
AND WELCOME TO VOLUME I, FATAL CONVERGENCE!
Gabriel Tall Chief and Horace Brave Scout greet you as an honest friend and candidate for Retrostar challenger! This is a narrative by CP-challenged Gabriel and his cousin Horace that chronicles the struggles of humanity enlisted in a genius's computerized zero sum wargame against the global invasions of unknown superior entities. The Twin Earth chronicles record these battles with relentless waves of alien power which cause the reversal of technology and culture. Mankind sustains one attack only to be blasted by another. How many onslaughts will come? How will they appear? How long can people cope? Or can they? In today's society that has come to question the ability of world powers and leaders to solve catastrophic problems, the struggles of people on Earths I and II will speak to all those who are searching for a winning strategy in a seemingly no-win dilemma.
Our RetroStar Chroniclers:
Gabriel Tall Chief, a Lakota Indian prophet in Holland House, a private children's care center and hospice, Eden Prairie, Minnesota, in the 1990s. As his chronicles for Earth II show, years in advance of the developments he revealed that there would be a catastrophic tsunami, a world-wide network of terrorism and use of conventional explosives to disrupt government and society, the confrontation of the Arab bloc with the West involving the threat of chemical-biological WPM (Weapons of Pestilential Murder), a decline in NASA and the secret intelligence services, catastrophic weather changes, and the discovery of artifacts of Atlantis (much larger pyramids than Giza's have recently come to light in the former Yugoslavia); he also predicted a total collapse of computer-based Western society and the reversal of technology, not to mention, the reversal of cultural development, the rise and fall of a world government based on the European Union, and a Dutch takeover of America and the Caribbean as an Ice Age, ignited by Global Warming, clamps down on most of the Northern Hemisphere.
Gabriel's disciple and dream-weaver and dream-rider, Horace Brave Scout, who gathered the "fragments" of the chronicles that remained after Gabriel died and made a great leap for mankind.
Before the Lakota recorders, Jason the captain of the Argo, who led the expedition to regain the Golden Fleece, foresaw this apparition heading for Earth:
Back in the 1700s the Lakota got a little prophetic recording the tribe's events, foreseeing ANNO STELLAE 1912's Sinking of the Big Canoe:
Later, Horace Brave Scout journeyed back to the same event, and the others that followed it in quick succession:
The Kiowa, too, had their recorders:
The best cushy job in his life--working for Wolff and Harland in the Belfast shipyards--turned sour for Marty Yeager, so sour he drew a star that, one bitter-cold, black night, answered his call for bloody revenge from across the universe.
Did you get the impression from the calendars that Earth got into some kind of big trouble sometime around ANNO 1912? Your impression is absolutely true to the facts. But that was just the beginning--the first tiny baby step to what we now are facing. What is causing all this havoc and mayhem and unannounced terrorism in the Universe, the Solar System, and the Twin Earths that follows close on the sinking of the White Star Line's greatest ship? Nobody seems to know, and the right questions aren't even being asked--not for a long time anyway, thanks to the opposition of all-powerful vested interests, and by then it may be too late to save Earth(s) from the unknown Alien(s). But the gate of RETROSTAR and THE CIRCULAR WEB is lying open before us--and someone wise said it is better to do the right thing late than never.
The Series of the Twin Earths is available on disk or can be electronically transmitted. The series consists of: RETRO STAR, Vol. 1, Fatal Convergence, Vol. 2, Cloud and Avalanche, Vol. 3. Battles of the DUBESOR, Vol. 4, Lost Chronicles; Part Two, Unchronicles, Vol. 5, Natal Convergence, Vol. 6, Beyond the Rapture, Vol. 7. Final Wars...Convergence at Orion
A "Letter to Agent, Outlines, and Overview and Marketing Strategy" of the Series":
Agent Letter, Outlines, Strategy
A Last Word Count in ANNO STELLAE 1997: 1,400,000
Outlines for VOLUME I, RETROSTAR:
CHRONICLES 1-24--WHAT'S IN THEM?
CHRONICLE ONE--WHAT'S IN IT?
CHRONICLES TWO TO SIX--WHAT'S IN THEM?
CHRONICLES SEVEN TO NINE--WHAT'S IN THEM?
CHRONICLES TEN TO TWELVE--WHAT'S IN THEM?
CHRONICLES EIGHTEEN TO NINETEEN--WHAT'S IN THEM?
CHRONICLES TWENTY TO TWENTY-THREE--WHAT'S IN THEM?
CHRONICLE TWENTY-FOUR--WHAT'S IN IT?
OUTLINES, CHRONICLES ONE TO FORTY-FIVE
OUTLINES, CHRONICLES FIFTY-EIGHT TO SIXTY TWO
Main Game Players (Earth II):
1. The Titans (Atlanteans) who lost Atlantis, on both Earths; then tried repeatedly to re-assert their rule over Earth II; they are a superhuman species that has turned vampire and lives almost indefinitely.
2. The Ten Stones of Fire (Starlike, Jeweline, Super-intelligent, Alien Entities), each performing as OP, or, Opposing Player, with the aim of conquering and destroying the Earths, I and II, and their respective universes.
3. Dr. Pikkard's Computer Wargame, represented by Wally, an electronically-created, free-roaming butterly who fights for humanity's survival against the Alien(s)
4. Human "Alphabetic" or A-Z Champions, also a subgroup called DUBESOR, or the Rosebud Champions
5. Yeshua, the A and Z, the Alpha and Omega, and the Aleph and Tau (also known as FC, the so-called "Forbidden Category")
EVEN BEFORE THE TITANIC'S SPECTACULAR MAIDEN VOYAGE DIVE TO HADES IN CHRONICLE ONE, SOME CLUES ARE GIVEN US. FOR INSTANCE: ON BOTH EARTH I AND EARTH II A CERTAIN CHOICE OF A YOUNG RUSSIAN ARISTOCRAT'S FIANCE (UPPER CLASS, KREMLIN-BORN AND BRED DAUGHTER OF A COURT PHYSICIAN, KNOWN LATER AS ONLY THE "OVERLY POSSESSIVE" WIFE OF THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNER COUNT LEO TOLSTOY) PREPARED THE WAY OF THE ALIEN ENTITY ON EARTH II AND THE DRAGON ON EARTH I: FOR THIS CHECK OUT SCENARIO I. THEN RETURN FOR SCENARIO II, WHICH REVEALS THE GREAT RECORDER HIMSELF, CHRONICLER GABRIEL TALL CHIEF. FINALLY, SCENARIO III, WHERE A KREMLIN STARETZ REVEALS YEARS BEFOREHAND WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE ILL-STARRED 20TH CENTURY OF BOTH EARTHS, WHEN SOMETHING WORSE THAN THE H5N 1 STRAIN OF THE BIRD FLU VIRUS IS INFECTING THE TWINS, SO THAT THEIR INTERTWINED FATES ARE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO SEPARATE FROM EACH OTHER.
(Chronicles Completed unmarked; Chronicles Not Yet Available Marked IP, In Progress)
Volume I Fatal Convergence
Retrostar Contents
Scenario I: CHRONICLE OF SOFYA'S CHOICE
Scenario II: CHRONICLE OF THE MEDICINE SPEAR
Scenario III: CHRONICLE OF THE KREMLIN STARETZ--EARTH I
CHRONICLE ONE, A. S. (ANNO STELLAE, Year of the Star) 1912 1. The Belfast Colossus 2. Night of the Tornnarsuk
PART I, CHRONICLE ONE, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
3. "What, have we hit anything?"
PART II, CHRONICLE ONE, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
4. Pursuit 5. Mystery Stone
PART III, CHRONICLE ONE, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TWO, A. S. 1918 Visions from Space
CHRONICLE TWO, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE THREE, A. S. 1924 1. The East Gate 2. Carter's Pill
PARTS 1-2, CHRONICLE THREE, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
3. Carter's Royal Sphinx Turkish Cigarettes 4. G-EAOU
PARTS 3-4, CHRONICLE THREE, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FOUR, A. S. 1939 1. The Polar King 2. Convergence in Tinsel Town
CHRONICLES FOUR AND FIVE, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FIVE, A. S. 1967 1. "Act of God" 2. Letter to ANNO 5931 3. The River of Time's End
CHRONICLE SIX, A. S. 1969 1. The Chevy Chase Inscription 2. A Different Drum 3. Signature of the Drum 4. Miracle at Project M
CHRONICLE SEVEN, A. S. 1985 1. "Switched off?" 2. Epitaph for a Lost Ship
CHRONICLE EIGHT, A. S. 1986 1. "Roll Program." (Challenger) 2. STS 51-L Sequence of Main Events 3. Dear Mr. President:
CHRONICLES SIX, SEVEN, AND EIGHT, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE NINE, A. S. 1987 1. Black Tuesday II 2. Spackle in the Sky with Diamonds 3. Tempest in a Teapot? 4. Mouse or Lion? 5. "Now you see it..." 6. Skylab II: the Year of Sol 7. Enigma of the Gleba 8. Catamaran and Mouse 9. Last of the Great American Icons
CHRONICLE NINE, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TEN, A. S. 1994 1. "And so if he sign rosebud. It just a game." 2. "A lot of 'mind games,' yeah?" 3. Kamamoto's Mind Game 4. Butterfly's StartUp
CHRONICLE TEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
5. "It's All in the Frequency."
"It's All in the Frequency," CHRONICLE TEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE ELEVEN, A. S. 1996- 1. Flyby of the Blue Centaur 2. Hantsbo's Main Chance
CHRONICLE ELEVEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
3. The Thief in the Night (Earth I) THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TWELVE, A. S. 2024 1. A Question of Any 2. A Matter Under Advisement: The Triliths of Orion--Part I
CHRONICLE TWELVE, PART I, RETROSTAR
A Matter Under Advisement: The Triliths of Orion--Part II CHRONICLE TWELVE, PART II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE THIRTEEN, A. S. 2113 1. A Childish Phase 2. Reformed 3. Q.U.I.P.
CHRONICLE THIRTEEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FOURTEEN, A. S. 2145 1. Fresh Ice 2. The Ultimate Weapon 3. The Unstoppable Chill 4. Nils the Red
CHRONICLE FOURTEEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FIFTEEN, A. S. 2146 1. Head #41 2. Plots and Counterplots
CHRONICLE FIFTEEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE SIXTEEN, A. S. 2155 1. "First Citizen" 2. Red Bladed II, Retrenchment, and the Mole
CHRONICLE SIXTEEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE SEVENTEEN, A. S. 2165 1. More Crowns for the Emperor 2. Convergence of Kings
CHRONICLE SEVENTEEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE EIGHTEEN, A. S. 2170 1. Convergence in Greece: Beyond the Roche Limit 2. Marching Trees 3. Workin' for the Man 4. First the Foie Gras, Then... 5. Old is In, New is Out! 6. Another Domecraft Scratched! 7. Homecoming to Chillingsworth-opolis! 8. A Mongolian Interruption 9. Bisbee on Alert! 10. Chillingsworth's Zombie
PART ONE, CHRONICLE EIGHTEEEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
11. Crisis Control at the Olde Guildhall 12. "Sorry, folks, no Tube today" 13. Visions and Portents 14. Last Breakfast at the Chillingsworthies 15. Fleeing Birds, Floundering Fishes 16. Chillingsworth's Contingency Plan 17. Chillingsworth's Personal Test 18. Black Death II 19. Our Lady of the Angels--Vacancy 20. Palms, More Palms, and Fire Jaguars
PART TWO, CHRONICLE EIGHTEEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
21. "What, has the plumbing been hit too?" 22. "Hull bloody world's fallin' apart!" 23. Final ESCape 24. 19.9999999999999...Chthonic Complications 25. The Arctic Fox 26. Seemingly Doomed 27. Death of the Rose? 28. Counterclockwise 29. Birdman of Our Lady's 30. Cause: Unknown
PART THREE, CHRONICLE EIGHTEEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE NINETEEN, A. S. 2171... 1. Hermon's Folly 2. Crazy John from Ivujivik
CHRONICLE NINETEEN, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TWENTY, A. S. 2251 1. Ice and Fire 2. Singer of the Stone
CHRONICLE TWENTY, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TWENTY-ONE, A. S. 2382 1. A Plain Dutch Boy 2. The Good Ship Argo 3. A Mill Worker! 4. Shafted CHRONICLE TWENTY-ONE, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TWENTY-TWO, A. S. 2390-91 1. "Work, woman!" 2. Wooden Wings 3. The Big Little Apple
CHRONICLE TWENTY-TWO, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TWENTY-THREE, A. S. 2392 1. Leamis's Good Turn 2. The Mountain Climbed! 3. The Contract 4. Dendrochronology--the Professor's Folly 5. Just What the Doctor Ordered 6. Decline in a Dutch Paradise? 7. Vent and Rip
PART 1, CHRONICLE TWENTY-THREE, RETROSTAR
8. The Perfect Getaway 9. "A River flowed out of Eden..." 10. "Discoverer of Lost Atlantis" 11. Cave of Cannibals 12. Visitors to Earth 13. The Mary Celeste Avenger 14. "We three kings of Orient are..."
PART 2, CHRONICLE TWENTY-THREE, RETROSTAR
15. The Paper Chase 16. Outings with Anne 17. The Kilpaison Female Temperament 18. King of Ellis 19. The Break 20. The Treasure Room 21. The Professor's Wargame
PART 3, CHRONICLE TWENTY-THREE, RETROSTAR
22. The Gray Fox Speaketh 23. "Was it in his contract?" 24. A Dream and a Face 25. Atlantis--will she ever come? 26. Four Cents Saved, Four Cents Earned 27. "Low bridge! Everybody down!" 28. Rebirth of the Atlantis
PART 4, CHRONICLE TWENTY-THREE, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TWENTY-FOUR, A. S. 2393 1. Convergence in Wioteheka Wi 2. Fool's Day 3. A Good Deal 4. Losers, Weepers 5. Fritz the Farmer 6. Cloaks and Daggers 7. Escape of Department 13 8. No Ordinary Day 9. The Tramp CHRONICLE TWENTY-FOUR, PART I, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
10. Dr. Pikkard's Papers 11. Van Donkt to the Rescue 12. A Charmed Life? 13. Black Tuesday III 14. Fritz, Loti, the Domine, and Plenty of Nothin' 15. Choices 16. Dead Man's Cheque 17. Star of Jamaica 18. The Trouble with Wednesday II 19. Battle of the Atlantis PART TWO, CHRONICLE TWENTY-FOUR, VOL. I, RETRO STAR
20. "Ship up!" 21. Reunion Amidst the Stars 22. "Nach Palestine, Reno nicht!" 23. The Open Porthole 24. "Ship down!" 25. Ship Across! 26. Taken for a Ride 27. The Mystery Youth 28. Second Thoughts 29. Visitations in the Night 30. Angels! 31. A New Olson? 32. "Who will stop it?" 33. Hodgkins the Magnificent 34. "I've failed!" 35. The Plain People 36. Anna Invicta 37. Pieter and the Blue Centaur
PART THREE, CHRONICLE TWENTY-FOUR, VOL. I, RETROSTAR
(Chronicles completed: unmarked)
Volume II Cloud and Avalanche
Contents Book One
CHRONICLE TWENTY-FIVE, A. S. (ANNO STELLAE, Year of the Star) 2415 Breath of the Red Star
CHRONICLE TWENTY-SIX, A. S. 2433 Star Song
CHRONICLES TWENTY-FIVE AND TWENTY-SIX, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TWENTY-SEVEN, A. S. 2444 1. Three "Pearls" 2. The Dragon and the Dragoman 3. Farewells 4. The Liverpool Express 5. The Sphinx and Lady Anne 6. Letter of Marque 7. The Enchanted Islands 8. The Compleat Angler 9. Anne's Discovery 10. Pluto's Ball 11. Deliverance 12. The Reverend's Journey 13. Nemesis III 14. The Devil Man's Medicine 15. La Calaca 16. The Mail Bag from La Boca 17. Change of Administration
CHRONICLE TWENTY-SEVEN, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE TWENTY-EIGHT, A. S. 2457 1. Diana's Expedition 2. Dr. Celman and the Papers 3. The New Atlantis 4. Artiste with a Gun 5. The Captain's Cross 6. Artiste at Work! 7. The Scarlet Woman 8. Madmen and Savages 9. Island of the Moon 10. Jaguars, and Glyphs
PART I, CHRONICLE TWENTY-EIGHT, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
11. Day One 12. Day Two 13. Day Three 14. Papadoc 15. Dzong kunu! 16. The Shrine in the Square 17. Celman's Escape 18. John Canoe's Discovery 19. The Fatal Asterisk 20. Convergence on the Lago Negro 21. Homecoming in 3C 295 PART II, CHRONICLE TWENTY-EIGHT, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
Book Two
CHRONICLE TWENTY-NINE, A. S. 2458 1. Much Ado About a Key 2. Much Ado About Moons
Chronicle Twenty-Nine included in link below
CHRONICLE THIRTY, A. S. 2460 Terra 2, Alpha Centauri
CHRONICLES TWENTY-NINE and THIRTY, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE THIRTY-ONE, A. S. 4130 The Blue Chair
CHRONICLE THIRTY-TWO, A. S. 4133 The Sixth Hour
CHRONICLE THIRTY-THREE, A. S. 4146 The Dreaded Day
CHRONICLES THIRTY-ONE, THIRTY-TWO, THIRTY-THREE, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE THIRTY-FOUR, A. S. 4148 1. "Have you ever heard such nonsense?" 2. The Power of Life and Death 3. Thirty Silver Pieces 4. A True Diplomat!
CHRONICLE THIRTY-FOUR, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE THIRTY-FIVE, A. S. 4149 1. A Dish of Rue 2. "God go with you, dear Auntie!" 3. One Major Hindrance 4. Higher Ground 5. The Trial
CHRONICLE THIRTY-FIVE, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE THIRTY-SIX, A. S. 4150 1. Street Women 2. The Golden Bowl 3. The Miracle 4. Noahdiah's Daughter 5. The Widow's Mites 6. Convergence on the Viaduct 7. Tower Ghosts 8. The Lustration 9. Falling Towers 10. The Tablets of Destiny
CHRONICLE THIRTY-SEVEN, A. S. 5909 The Tower of Eder
CHRONICLE THIRTY-EIGHT, A. S. 5913 The Road to Enaim
CHRONICLES THIRTY-SEVEN and THIRTY-EIGHT, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE THIRTY-NINE, A. S. 5918 1. The Many-Colored Robe 2. The Pit of Dothan 3. Twenty Pieces of Silver 4. The Iron Collar 5. The Wilderness of Shur 6. Visions of the Night 7. The Beak of Nebel 8. City of the Moon 9. The Cobra's Den 10. Thief in the Night 11. A Fruitful Bough
CHRONICLE THIRTY-NINE, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FORTY, A. S. 5920 Woes
CHRONICLE FORTY-ONE, A. S. 5923 Joseph the Steward!
CHRONICLES FORTY AND FORTY-ONE, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FORTY-TWO, A. S. 5926 1. War! 2. The Gold Harp 3. Daughter of the Desert 4. The Voice of the Pomegranate 5. The Scorpion's Sting 6. Sleepless in Paradise 7. The Road to Babelen 8. The King and the Prophetess 9. Angel of Death 10. The Gray Dove 11. Horsemen in Pairs
CHRONICLE FORTY-TWO, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FORTY-THREE, A. S. 5927 1. Rising Waters 2. The Death of Heaphes 3. More Falling Gods 4. Into the Pit 5. "Will you and your god slay him too?"
CHRONICLE FORTY-THREE, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FORTY-FOUR, A. S. 5929 1. Signet, Cord, and Staff 2. Joseph's Prison 3. "Forbidden Vases"
PART I, CHRONICLE FORTY-FOUR, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
4. Judah's Return
PART II, CHRONICLE FORTY-FOUR, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
5. Two Prodigals 6. Zenobia's Return 7. A Ring of Red and Black 8. The Lowest Pit
PART III, CHRONICLE FORTY-FOUR, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FORTY-FIVE, A. S. 5931 1. The Per-aa Dreamed 2. The Per-aa's Secret 3. The Ka of Narmer 4. Doors of Brass
PARTS 1-4, CHRONICLE 45, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
5. The White Lady PART 5, CHRONICLE FORTY-FIVE
6. Tamar's Children 7. Imhotep's Signet 8. The Sinking Ship 9. M.G.Y. Calling PARTS 6-9, CHRONICLE FORTY-FIVE, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
Book Three
CHRONICLE FORTY-SIX, A. S. 6098 1. A Second OP? 2. Pher's New Army 3. The Two Serpents, Part I
CHRONICLE FORTY-SIX, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FORTY-SEVEN, A. S. 6286 1. Waters of Blessing 2. Mosheh's Fire-Chariots 3. The Rod of a Ready Deliverer 4. The Pen of a Ready Writer
CHRONICLE FORTY-SEVEN, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FORTY-EIGHT, A. S. 6679 1. Lightning over Kedesh 2. Under the Tamar Tree 3. Tinker's Nail
CHRONICLE FORTY-EIGHT, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FORTY-NINE, A. S. 6688 Greener Pastures
CHRONICLE FIFTY, A. S. 6699 The Gleaner CHRONICLES FORTY-NINE and FIFTY, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FIFTY-ONE, A. S. 6700 Two Wives and an Attitude CHRONICLE FIFTY-ONE, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FIFTY-TWO, A. S. 7074 1. The Dove 2. The Fish 3. The Ship 4. The Worm and the Vine
CHRONICLE FIFTY-THREE, A. S. 7504 The Topmost Twig CHRONICLES FIFTY-TWO and FIFTY-THREE, VOL. II, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FIFTY-FOUR, A. S. 7506 1. The Lost Dream 2. The Colossus 3. The Fourth Man 4. "O God, how long?" CHRONICLE FIFTY-FOUR, VOl. II, RETROSTAR
(Chronicles Completed unmarked)
Volume III Battles of the DUBESOR
Book One
CHRONICLE FIFTY-FIVE, A. S. (ANNO STELLAE, Year of the Star) 7537 Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin CHRONICLE FIFTY-FIVE, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FIFTY-SIX, A. S. 8033 Iskander's Secret CHRONICLE FIFTY-SIX, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE FIFTY-SEVEN, A. S. 8507
Notes on Algol, Gorgons, and Nergul
1. U the Dire Knight PART ONE, CHRONICLE FIFTY-SEVEN, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
2. Lords of Ahpikondia PART TWO, CHRONICLE FIFTY-SEVEN, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
3. Molu and the Gorgons PART THREE, CHRONICLE FIFTY-SEVEN, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
4. 02K05 00340 00000000000150000000001000000010 5. Peninah's Comeuppance PART FOUR, CHRONICLE FIFTY-SEVEN, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
6. Molu and the Gorgons, Part II 7. The East Gate Regained? PART FIVE, CHRONICLE FIFTY-SEVEN, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
Book Two
CHRONICLE FIFTY-EIGHT, A. S. 8732 1. Chiron's PQ Plan 2. Elektra's Comeuppance BOOK TWO, CHRONICLE FIFTY-EIGHT, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
3. Mink and the Flying Horse 4. Uwe's Last Farewell 5. The Wandering Paiute PART TWO, CHRONICLE FIFTY-EIGHT, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
6. Wally and the Nano-Queen 7. Michael's Last Trump PART THREE, CHRONICLE FIFTY-EIGHT, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
(Chronicles in Progress marked)
Book Three
THE LOST CHRONICLE, A. S. 9117 The Goatherd Who Turned King BOOK THREE, VOL. III, THE GOATHERD WHO TURNED KING, Retro Star
Book Four
CHRONICLE FIFTY-NINE, A. S. 10, 272 The Blind Man Who Could See BOOK FOUR, CHRONICLE FIFTY-NINE, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE SIXTY, A. S. 10,282 1. The Shadow Line 2. The Lacquered Wardrobe 3. A Pilgrim's Heart BOOK FIVE, PART ONE, VOL. III, CHRONICLE SIXTY, RETROSTAR
4. Talulah's Star PART II, VOL. III, CHRONICLE SIXTY
IP 5. South by Southwest IP 6. The Gray Wolf IP 7. Lux ex Tenebris IP
CHRONICLE SIXTY-ONE, A. S. 10,995 1. Five Stars for the Long Road
CHRONICLE SIXTY-ONE, PART I, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
2. ARGO Unrequited 3. Pilgrim, Bluebird, Starboy CHRONICLE SIXTY-ONE, VOL. III, PART II-III, RETROSTAR
Part III,
CHRONICLE SIXTY-ONE, VOL. III, PART III CONTINUED, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE SIXTY-ONE, VOL. III, PART IV, AND CONCLUSION
4. Zu the Birdman IP 5. The Tiger of Hagi IP 6. The White Stone
Book Five
Just as a classical Greek epic does not begin at the beginning but in the middle, so the Retrostar chronicles of Gabriel Tall Chief and Horace Brave Scout do not end at the ending--no, they finish exactly here: This is the Last Piece of the Whole Puzzle, Ariadne's Thread for the Labyrinth, Alexander's Sword for the Gordian Knot, the Checkmate, the Royal Flush, the Golden Key in Quinn's search for the meaning locked into his father's sand painting game...all rolled into one grand finale, one classical drama's catharsis and denouement, and...you must join the ARGO and decide for yourself if you really want to find what all men want but are maybe seeking in the wrong places and even dead-ends:
CHRONICLE SIXTY-TWO, A. S. 10,999 Voyage of the ARGO V: Quest of the Cybernauts PART I, CHRONICLE SIXTY-TWO, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
Part II, CHRONICLE SIXTY-TWO, VOL.III, RETROSTAR
PART III, OPTION NUMBER THREE, CHRONICLE SIXTY-TWO, RETROSTAR
PART IV, CHAMPION DAVID WILKERSON, CHRONICLE SIXTY-TWO, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
PART V, NONE OF THE ABOVE, CHRONICLE SIXTY-TWO, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
EPILOGUE I EPILOGUE I, "LAST TO LEAVE...," EPILOGUE FOR VOLUMES I-III, VOL. III, RETROSTAR
(Chronicles Completed unmarked, Chronicles In Progress marked)
Volume IV Lost Chronicles, Secret Chronicles, Mystery Chronicles, Unchronicles, Twin Chronicles with Appendix by Horace Brave Scout
Book One CHRONICLE OF THE INUNDATION, A. A. S. "Year of the Metamorph" How a small, big-winged, thirsty creature with only a sip of water on its tiny mind set in motion events that created the lake-like Mediterranean Sea--the vital body of water around which most of the earliest and greatest civilizations of mankind were birthed.
CHRONICLE OF THE INUNDATION, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
SECRET CHRONICLE A. A. S. (Ante Anno Stellae, Before Year of the Star) 100,000 The Flamesteeds of Ara How the cherubic magistrate and Mercy-seat guardian, Uran, joined forces with Michael against the take-over of Universe I by the rebel archangel. How the other two cherubs fought to quarantine the equal threat to Universe II that was posed by the corrupted star-stones.
SECRET CHRONICLE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE CRYSTAL BRIDGE A. A. S. 9, 500, Battle For the Bridge How Lucifer, the fallen archangel, fails to seize the vital Gate of Ara, which controls access to the twin Universes; how he makes up part of this loss with vindictive destruction, and goes on to attack the new species the Enemy has planted on what he sees as his exclusive domain, a planet in his allotted sector, Universe I. How going up against Michael a third time, for the control of the interplanetary bridge connecting Earth I and II, he is worsted by the loyalist forces commanded by Michael. It is a terribly humiliating and painful setback (almost as bad as being thrown out of heaven by the triumphant Michael and his armies!). Yet human beings, taken in by Lucifer getting them to rebel against the Enemy, remain his to control and manipulate any way he chooses. He has succeeded in stamping out all fearers of God, except for one man named Noah. That one man should be no problem, Lucifer reasoned. What could one man do against him? He, Lord Lucifer, had won the battle for Earth I--or so it seemed to him.
CHRONICLE OF THE CRYSTAL BRIDGE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE STAR ORACLES (EARTH I) A. A. S. "The Day of Enoch" The Man Who Was Taken Up How Enoch, son of Lamech, cultivated a relationship with the Most High God when most men of his generation worshipped many gods and lived immorally and violently. How the Most High God was so pleased with Enoch that He reached down one day and took Enoch bodily into heaven, but before that day Enoch was given divine signs that signified the meanings God had put in the stars to guide all men back to the truth and to warn them of the coming of His Son, the Dragon-Destroyer.
CHRONICLE OF THE STAR ORACLES, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE HARVEST TIME, Part I A. A. S. 3,301, Year of the Sky Reaper, Harvest Time How no serpent can change its stripes and how a simple shepherd-farmer is confronted with an Atlantean plasma-harvesting expedition. How Lime Flower, Yew Tree's wife, and family coped with being dragged off from their village to slavery in Crooked Tree Village far down from the mountains and on the river plain, and how they were rescued by a God who was unlike all other gods of woods and trees and stones and brooks they had known and worshipped. VOL. IV, CHRONICLE OF THE SKY REAPER, PART I, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE
(EARTH II)
A. A. S. 1230-1200, Voyage of the Argonauts How the now extra-terrestrial, vampire race of the Atlanteans, working behind a convenient screen of (to their perspective) petty geopolitics of humanity, sought to stop Jason of Iolkos, also called The One-Sandalled, from gaining the Golden Fleece and returning a hero to Greece. All it needed was such a man of this caliber to unify the whole country of Achaea (at present a hodge-podge of rival city-states and kingdoms ruled by lesser men), which would then be a major setback to the expansion of Ilios and its snake goddess, the major player the Atlanteans had chosen to promote in their grand strategy to regain an Earth II recontructed to their liking.
PART I, CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
PART II, CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
PART III, CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
PART IV, CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
PART V, CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
PART VI, CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
PART VII, CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
PART VIII, CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
"NONE OF THE ABOVE," CONCLUSION, CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE
CHRONICLE OF THE TWO SERPENTS, PART II A. A. S. 1230-1200, The Horse of Tenedos How two serpents were released to cause havoc in the Upper World. How two ways of life, two sets of gods, two worlds collided at Ludim's chief city, Ilios, later called Troy (Troas) by the Romans. How the poets, chiefly Homer, celebrated the conflict in terms that glorified the heroes on both sides and capitalized on the abduction of a beautiful queen that supposedly sparked the conflict. How Atlanteans, continually meddling in human society for their own advantage, paid a prior visit with a burning "stone" that could have, if finished in construction and put to great effect in the war, have finished the Achaeans in their bid for mastery of the ancient world centered on the Aegean. How, then, the Two Serpent-Armed Goddess was deposed in the bud by the "Horse of Tenedos" and a new world was free to take shape that was not the one the Atlanteans would have chosen. How these vital affairs played out in the coming of Yeshua, and the Good News of that coming was able to be spread universally by the Greek language (not the mother-goddess's language of the Ludim, which would always be spoken locally, not universally like Greek).
CHRONICLE OF THE TWO SERPENTS, PART II, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF HORSES OF ISRAEL, A. A. S. 984, The Budding Sopetet How a prophet of Israel, destined to be one of her greatest, was born in Tishbe of Gilead, a village so small it was a flyspeck on the map, and how he suffered early hardship and rough training in Life's School of Hard Knocks, and how he came to confront the king of Israel, Ahab, because he took a foreign, idol-worshipping wife from the wicked heathen city of Sidon.
CHRONICLE OF THE HORSES OF ISRAEL, PART II, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF LION-KING, A. A. S. 686, The Wounded Lion, How the king of Assyria, though he was styled "King of the Universe," was badly mauled in a campaign against a tiny kingdom called Judah, and how he returned home without his army (which had mysteriously perished in camp in a single night) only to find his country stirring with rebellion against his tyrannical and disastrous rule.
CHRONICLE OF THE LION-KING, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE VISIONS OF DIVINE MEMORY A. A. S. 537 How the prophet of Israel, grown old, took ship from Joppa to the Iktis, the port city of the Isles of Tin in the Extremity of the West, taking not only his loyal servant Uthai but the Good News of the holy name and saving goodness and almighty power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to idol-worshipping tribes who burnt people as sacrifices in tree-high haystacks. How the prophet shared with them his divine visions of things and worlds to come.
CHRONICLE OF THE VISIONS OF DIVINE MEMORY, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF LIMERICK II A. A. S. 270 A Cruise on Joseph's Canal How two Irish Celts from the Gaelic Kingdom of Limerick serving as mercenary soldiers in Ptolemy II's army encountered a late and fading memory of a Great Deliverer who kept the land of Kem, Mizraim, the Land of Red and Black, from starving to death in the "Years of the Fat Hyena" when all crops failed for seven years in a row and the hyenas and other scavangers grew fat on the multitude of dead and dying animals and even the bodies of people left unburied in abandoned villages.
CHRONICLE OF LIMERICK II, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF CLEOPATRA A. A. S. 31, The Horse of Antirrhodus and the Burning Eye How the last ruler of the royal Macedonian line of Ptolemy in the Land of the Red and Black sought to stop Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus, the grand-nephew of the late Julius Casesar of Roma, from seizing her kingdom so that she could reign as Empress over East and West, with herself deified as the Goddess Isis's incarnation, thus heading the world's state religion. How she retrieved from the world-famed Museum of Alexandria's archives certain old books that contained plans for a super-weapon invented by a race of "Orthrysians"--reputed to be demi-gods from the distant past who had paid her predecessor, the Macedonian pharaoh Ptolemaeus II Philadelphus a state visit with this all-powerful weapon as a "gift" in exchange for certain concessions.
CHRONICLE OF CLEOPATRA, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE STAR OF THE ROSE A. S. 4 -, Wan Li and the Star-Men of the Zoziash How Wan Li, a wealthy merchant of the kingdom of Kuo in the lands of the East, met a prince of stargazers, and together in a caravan they followed the star of the coming King of the Jews--which first appeared in the Sign of the Fish set in the heavens by the Creator of heaven, the earth, and all things and creatures int them; how they met the wicked king in the West, and yet found the young Child born King of kings and Lord of lords, Whose star led them to his house in the little town of Bethlehem of Ephratah-Judaea; how Wan Li and the Star-men worshipped the divine Child, and gave Him royal gifts, then returned secretely without telling the wicked king the whereabouts of the precious Child, and how all their lives were changed forever by the mere sight and Presence of the holy Child.
CHRONICLE OF THE NATAL STAR A. S. 1-30, The Naked Brave How the Light-Bringer, Lucifer the Covering Cherub who hovered above the Throne of God and kept the Stones of Fire, lost his place in heaven after seeking to be Supreme Deity and was cast out by Michael the archangel and his loyalist forces. How the Messiah, only Son of the Great Father Spirit, leaving the Great Council Fire to live and fight for his Father on Earth (lost to Lucifer and his allies), stripped off his skin and scalp, leaving them shining in his Father's sky-lodge, and how like a star they went seeking for him on Earth.
Reunion How the Messiah, the Bright Morning Star, was rejoined by His stellar glory after his great Victory, and how one of the thieves crucified beside him on a cross shared in the Yeshuas' incomparable splendor.
CHRONICLE OF THE RIBBON-BEARER A. S. 30, Part I, Tsedahh's Quest How heaven's most insignificant angel was given the task of finding the Universe's most significant tree.
CHRONICLE OF THE RIBBON-BEARER, PART I, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
2. Secret Sharers How two secret disciples of Yeshua, the condemned and executed Messiah-claimant, were unwitting participants in the greatest drama of the ages, and how one, Joseph of Arimathea, took the news of that Event to the Earth's far corner, the coasts and isles of Britain, and how he gave a lasting apostolic blessing to safeguard the land against heathen barbarians after his departure.
3. A New Name How Tsedahh the Ribbon-Bearer retrieved the ribbon and after loosing it above Jerusalem was appointed Keeper of the Tree of Life for eternity, and how he received a new name and a glorious, bright make-over.
CHRONICLE OF THE RIBBON-BEARER, PART III, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE SUFFERING SERVANT A. S. 33, The Forsaken Stream How Yeshua took a towel and wash basin of the lowest household slave and taught his disciples what the Messiahship truly meant on the eve of his trials before the Jewish Council, Pilatus Pontius, and Tetrarch King Herod. CHRONICLE OF THE SUFFERING SERVANT, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF SAUL IN SELA, (OR, PAULUS IN PETRA) A. S. 35, The Eighth Pillar of Wisdom How the budding apostle (who would change his name to Paulus) received a revelation about God's grace directly from the Source, and how it changed his entire perspective on life and the course of his life, not to mention the direction and whole ethos and spirituality of Western Civilization and even the world at large.
CHRONICLE OF SAUL IN SELA, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE THIRD HEAVEN A. S. 49 How two apostles, Paul and Barnabus, reached Lystra in Asia Minor with the Good News of Yeshua, but were hideously stoned when the people, incited by anti-missionaries, turned against them after first proclaiming them gods, Zeus and Mercury (Barnabus called Zeus because of his substantial size and Paulus, being small, called Mercury). How in death (for Paulus was killed) Paulus was taken to view heaven, but was restored to life and sent back to finish his mission on Earth by Yeshua Himself.
CHRONICLE OF THE THIRD HEAVEN, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE OF TROAS A. S. 50, Philippi Calling How Paulus and two companions, Silas and Lucanus, all believers in Yeshua the Messiah, paused at Troas Alexandria on the coast of Asia Minor (Ionia) to rest and pray. How this epic site where two world-views and their respective gods and goddesses had fought for supremacy 1,180 years before became an even more epic launching point for Paulus's Gospel, for from this jumping-off point to all of Europe a new world was launched at the same time that would overturn the seemingly all-powerful, pagan Roman Empire itself.
CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE OF TROAS
CHRONICLE OF PAULUS AND SILAS IN PRISON A. S. 50, Birth of a Church and a New World How Paulus received a vision in the port of Alexandria Troas (a city near ancient Troy on the NW coast of Asia Minor) of a man of Macedonia urgently calling him to cross over with the Gospel, and how he and Silas were treated in Phillipi of Macedonia and how the city's jailor and his whole family were converted, which was the start of not only a new church but a new world.
CHRONICLE OF PAUL AND SILAS IN PRISON, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
UNCHRONICLE OF THE CHAINED APOSTLE, A. S. 63, Paulus in Britain How Paulus and Silas journeyed to the Estremeity of the West, also known as the Isles of Tin, to bring the good news of Christus to the pagan (and sometimes Jewish) inhabitants. CHRONICLE OF THE WEARY ANGEL A. S. 65 "Welcome, O Sweet Angel of Death" How Paulus, summoned back to court in Rome by the magistrate (a cynical man and Roman pragmatician) handling his case, found the innocent man somehow deserving of death, and how the condemned apostle greeted death by beheading in such a way that the unjust judge could hardly believe his ears when he questioned his aide about Paulus's last words.
UNCHRONICLE OF THE CHAINED APOSTLE and CHRONICLE OF THE WEARY ANGEL
CHRONICLE OF THE FOUR CROSSES A. S. 289, 1. The Theban Insurrection, 2. The Tenth Man How a chief killed his best warriors out of pride, but in doing so made them even greater warriors in the country of sky lodges, where they held the river ford against the raiding Red Dog Star while he suffered everlasting shame for his deed.
CHRONICLE OF THE FOUR CROSSES, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE M-Q WILD GOOSE A. S. 349, Wan Hoo the Kaikonaut and the Rocket Chair How a son honored his ailing, aged mother and went to find the potent herb on the moon to cure her and make her live forever, thereby becoming the first man to attempt to fly there on a "wild goose" (the rocket-propelled chair he invented).
CHRONICLE OF THE M-Q WILD GOOSE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF EIRE'S MESSIAH A. S. 362, The Slave's Gift How Magonus Sucutus Patricius, a young, licentious, shallowly-believing Christian Briton of the noble Roman curiale class, was kidnapped and enslaved by Irish raiders, then later escaped from slavery in Ireland and returned home by a ship trading Irish wolfhounds, only to be accosted in a dream by an Irishman begging the noble youth to return and bring the light and deliverance to the lost and despairing people of the Emerald Island.
CHRONICLE OF EIRE's MESSIAH, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF THE PAY-BACK A.S. 410, The Fall of Roma, A.S. 1453 - Lamentations with Sacqueboutes How the Burgundians reaped what they sowed; how when barbarians they first shared in the destruction and sack of Western Roma, then benefited by the very civilization they helped destroy, becoming rich and powerful and even Christian in the formerly Roman territory they seized; how the East Roma emperor came to them seeking help against the Moslem Turks attacking his capital city, all that was left of his empire; how he went back to Constantinople without the Burgundian's aid, and how later the Burgundians lost not only their once glorious realm (full of music and feasting and courtly manners) and shining destiny but were reduced to Dijon, a brand of mustard.
CHRONICLE OF THE PAY-BACK, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE BLACK-ROBE A. S. 735, Herald of the Parousia: Bede of Wearmouth-Jarrow How a young brave of the Anglo-Saxons found refuge in a great stone tipi filled with holy men, and how he became a recorder of great things, and how he saw even greater things at the end of his life, which when written his frightened scribe thrust secretly, he thought, into the fire, only it refused to burn--things such as a future world ruler with his throne in London, a royal family renamed Windsor, and even a "people's princess, the glossy Cow Bird beauty called Diana.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLACK-ROBE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE BROKEN EAGLE FEATHER A. S. 878, A Refuge from the Storm How a mighty chief of a tribe fought tribes that came from the east stealing his people's horses and burning their tipis, and how, led by the wisdom of an old woman on the Isle of Athelney, he found a way to save his country, Wessex, which grew and became the mighty nation called England--a nation which came to possess power to obtain a vast realm and change the world. CHRONICLE OF THE BROKEN EAGLE FEATHER, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE WASICHU'S COMING IP A. S. 1620, The Mayflower How pale-skinned, strange newcomers who sailed a great canoe named for a flower and who wore many thicknesses of buckskins settled in a place with bad spirits but learned from us the Vanished People how to plant and produce plenty to eat.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLACK PRIMSTAV A. S. 1707, Chronicler of the Messiah How a rather ordinary Norwegian dairyman, Dreng Bjornsson, began a new Norwegian calendar stick, carving it to replace the old one that had been handed down to him. How the calendar stick became the opportunity for the enlargement of Dreng Bjornsson's vision of the world and the future as well, in the most unexpected way.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLACK PRIMSTAV
CHRONICLE OF THE WASICHU GHOST DANCER A. S. 1755, Bullets That Turned to Raindrops How a young chief trained his spirit with such wisdom and prudence that even bullets could not touch him (and later he would lead the new nation that formed after he achieved victory with arms over the superior forces of the British).
CHRONICLE OF THE WASICHU GHOST DANCER, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE DIVER'S CASQUE A. S. 1768, Angel of the Lake How Gouveneur Morris, a great leader of the Wasichu who helped write the Great Covenant of his people, when a young man was rescued from drowning in a sporting dive in a lake located on the Morrises' Manhattan island estate.
CHRONICLE OF THE DIVERS' CASQUE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE ASSASSIN A. S. 1775, The Lieutenant's Aim How a British sharpshooter had the commanding general of the break-away American colonies's arm dead in his gunsights, but, despite all his training and the 1,000 pounds paid him, could not bring himself to pull the trigger on what he saw to be a true king and a man of noble soul.
CHRONICLE OF THE ASSASSIN, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE GREAT WHITE FATHER'S PASSING A. S. 1799 How George Washington, who could have ruled the brand-new United States of America as a king but declined a third term and everything else smacking of kingship, spent his last day of life busily inspecting his estate and the well-being of its servants and workers; how he fell ill from a chill caught from five hours exposure to the raw weather, and how the unscientific medicine of the day not only failed to help but hastened him to his death; nhow the Dream he had dreamed was reviewed by an aged black woman of devout faith, and how the Dream fared along with the great one who dreamed it.
CHRONICLE OF THE GREAT WHITE FATHER'S PASSING, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE GARDENE OF DESTINYE A. S. 1850, Holiday at Castle Edzell How an eight year old girl from Abbotsbury solves the castle's greatest mind-game, a puzzle left over from the Age of Titans and later amended by Joseph of Arimathea and the 17th Century Tradescant brothers that was reputed to hold a key to the future well-being, even the preservation, of the British Isles.
CHRONICLE OF THE GARDENE OF DESTINYE, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF THE WASICHU BROTHERS' WAR A. S. 1863, Christmas at Andersonville How the white brothers of the North and South fought, and how the brother of the North, after terrible setbacks administered by the South's genius in war-craft and chieftainship, finally prevails--but in a Christmas play in a prison camp, not on the battlefield.
CHRONICLE OF THE WASICHU BROTHERS' WAR, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE BELZONI EXHIBIT A. S. 1865, Part I, The Colossus of Thebes, Part II, Twenty Minutes After Ten, Part III, "Where are you taking the Colossus, my good fellow?" How the reputed Colossus of Thebes representing the Pharaoh of the Hebrew Captivity came to Washington and was given a Presidential visit, and how the dying President, a Colossus to come, came to view the end in turn of the future Washington City. CHRONICLE OF THE BELZONI EXHIBIT, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF TWO BROTHERS A. S. 1865-, Giant Footprints How the Wasichu flooded the land of the Lakota, and how a young pioneer Wasichu "sodbuster" on a Dakota Territory homestead saved the life of a Rosebud Lakota chief who was Gabriel Tall Chief's great-grandfather.
CHRONICLE OF THE TWO BROTHERS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE BLACK SHIP'S CREW A. S. 1877, Escape from Wolverton How two delinquent boys escaped from a rural Californian reform school and were enlisted in a computerized wargame far in the future after one of them killed the other.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLACK SHIP'S CREW, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF THE GREY DOVE A. S. 1878, Wings over Te Aute How Te Hapuku and Karaitiana, two of the greatest warriors and chiefs of the Island of the Long Cloud, who had fought a bloody war over selling land to the white Europeans and opposed each other as bitter enemies for twenty five long years, were finally brought together by a compassionate intermediary, Sir George Grey, Premier of New Zealand, as Chief Te Hapuku lay dying in his lodge; how the wonders of the far future were unveiled before the amazed premier as he was given the secret meanings of the wonderfully intricate wood carvings of the Maori people--carvings that, to the Maori, contained not just the future but the power, the mana, of the world.
CHRONICLE OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY BRIDGE A. S. 1889, Norton's Grand Vision How a self-crowned "Emperor of the Americas and Protector of Mexico" in San Francisco envisoned a great bridge spanning the Bay, that not only would carry the commerce of men but their hearts' forgiveness and reconciliation. CHRONICLE OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY BRIDGE, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF THE LISTENING HEARTS A. S. 1912, 1. Wrestlers at the Brook How a Welsh miner left his home and job and followed a divine call to Swansea to establish a training camp for prayer warriors.
CHRONICLE OF THE LISTENING HEART, PART I, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
2. The Premonition How a mother in Second Class aboard a luxury liner on its maiden voyage in the North Atlantic could not sleep because the ship had been called "unsinkable," and spent most of three days voyage sitting up and praying.
CHRONICLE OF THE LISTENING HEART, PART II, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
3. "Sweet dreams, Mademoiselle!" How a rich, little girl in First Class aboard the doomed ship dreamed what was going to happen, and how her French governess calmed the girl and wished her sweet dreams only a few minutes before the vessel was fatally struck and sent to the bottom of the sea.
CHRONICLE OF THE LISTENING HEART, PART III, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE TIGERS' FEAST A. S. 1919, The Mirrors of Versailles How a Paris peace conference of the victorious Allies after the Great World War brokered a total disaster of a treaty at Versailles that, unforgiving and punishing Germany beyond any nation's endurance, automatically produced the Second World War, and how the famous mirrors of Versailles framing the conference room, being totally objective and honest, reflected a far different scene than Clemenceau, Wilson, and Lloyd George wished to portray to the anxious, watching world.
CHRONICLE OF THE TIGERS' FEAST, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE RAT STAR AND THE EXODUSTER A. S. 1919, Convergence in Kansas How a young black Kansas farm girl, Pearl Shoey, painted barn rats red to get rid of them, and saw then a red-glowing star that afterwards she thought must of changed her beloved Pa, because he seemed never the same after the red star touched him with its light. CHRONICLE OF THE RAT STAR AND THE EXODUSTER, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE ICE BIRD--PART I A.S. 1922, Shackleton's Third Expedition Continued How Sir Ernest Shackleton, famed polar explorer, on a solo day trip doing reconaissance for his third expedition south to the Pole by way of McMurdo's Dry Valleys--a 1,500 square mile tract of ice-free terrain--finds a strange, mastless ship, which he enters just as a polar cyclonic storm strikes, rndering the area uninhabitable. Christening it ENDURANCE II, after his last ship, the three-masted barkentine ENDURANCE that was crushed in the ice of the Weddell Basin, he sails on a pre-determined curse to the stars in the north, the Constellation of Orion, with a mission he does nt know until he reaches his destination.
CHRONICLE OF THE ICE BIRD, PART I, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE TRAVOIS A. S. 1919-1939, The War Between Wars How the First Horse, Ian "Breaks Eggs, " learned many things from Second Horse, until both could pull the travois together to the place chosen for the Great Council Fire of the End-Time.
CHRONICLE OF THE TRAVOIS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF YELLOWSTONE DAYS A. S. 1928, Song of the Golden West How the rollicking, high-spirited, hard-working girls and boys serving the crowds at Yellowstone, easily the premier national park of America, enjoyed a moment of innocence and beauty so rare in the world, not realizing it was all over for them and their generation in but a few months, with the Wall Street stock market melt-down of '29 just one incident in the long road backwards to the Stone Age.
CHRONICLE OF THE TIME ROCKET, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF RAGNAROK
A. S. 1937, Singer of the Ancient Seer
How a bard left the Emerald Island to look at old vellum books
and paintings preserved by the Benedictines in a monastery in Padua, Italia, and how they warned him about a second great world conflict of the Wasichu nations, which would usher in the new world order and the rise of a lion-bodied, man-headed Beast, the False Messiah, who would seize world power and crush out all the light of liberty and decency in Civilisation.
CHRONICLE OF RAGNAROK, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE MOUNTAIN TOMB
A. S. 1938, Eugenio's Secret
How a Basque fighting with the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War found ancient scrolls and artifacts in a tomb that were older
than even Eskual Herria, the Basque homeland that predated every
other nation and nationality in Europe.
CHRONICLE OF THE MOUNTAIN TOMB, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE OSLO TAPESTRY
A. S. 1938, Katrine's Secret
How a Norwegian woman, living alone, grew so desperate about her bone-dry spiritual condition that she would do anything, even take pictures of simple leaves and shadows in her garden, if it would help restore her faith--pictures forming a tapestry portraying events to come that would have astounded the world if all of them had been made public.
CHRONICLE OF THE OSLO TAPESTRY, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE RUINED CATHEDRAL
A. S. 1940, Winter of the Soul How Coventry was sacrificed, along with its ancient cathedral and much of its population, by a decision of Churchill who aimed to let the bombers through without any warning to Coventry in order to make the Nazis believe their secret code had not been cracked by Britain's code breakers at Bletchley House. How a half-literate scrubwoman in the smoking ruins of the Cathedral found the means to confront the unspeakable tragedy of losing practically everything in the bombing and firestorm that destroyed Coventry; that is, her husband, children, neighbors, city, cathedral, even her house and job.
CHRONICLE OF THE RUINED CATHEDRAL, VOL. IV. RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE SEA LION
A. S. 1940, 1. Convergence at Abbotsbury
How a pious, elder daughter caring for an aged, ailing mother,
prayed the right prayer, effectively throwing a switch to a
most powerful blessing 1,900 years old.
CHRONICLE OF THE SEA LION, PART I, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
2. Winter's Grace
How a Welsh "College of Intercessionary Prayer-warcraft and Fasting," founded by a former coal miner, succeeded in turning the major events of World War II, starting with the Battle of Britain.
CHRONICLE OF THE SEA LION, PART II, RETROSTAR
3. No Wings But a Prayer
How Sir Francis Cecil, hereditary Lord St. Aubyn of the Mount of St. Michael, Cornwall, while squadron commander of Spitfires in the Battle of Britain, was struck wingless by enemy fire but continued flying, and
how he was taken out over the coast where he witnessed an even greater event taking place off the notoriously stormgirt Chesil Banks.
CHRONICLE OF THE SEA LION, PART III, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
4. Ivy's Grand Slam
How a little English girl in Portsmouth changed her bedtime prayer and turned back an incoming V-2, setting it on a trajectory that almost took Shickelgruber out of the war.
CHRONICLE OF THE SEA LION, PART IV, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT, A. S. 1940- , How on Earth I Elijah, a Romanian boy growing up in a brutalM Communist-ruled country, found a miracle-producing faith just like Jason the Argonaut's to stand up against
the impossible odds of confronting a militaristic, atheist dictatorship destroying his beloved homeland, and how he made a new life for himself, succeeding after tens of thousands before him had been slain in the same attempt to win freedom.
CHAPTER 1, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 2, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 3, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 4, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 5, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 6, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 7, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 8, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 9, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 10, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 11, CHR0NICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 12, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 13, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 14, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 15, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 16, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 17, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHAPTER 18, CHRONICLE OF THE PILLAR OF LIGHT
CHRONICLE OF THE ORACLE OF MENO
A. S. 1938-1941, St. Roderick's Secret
How a Basque patriot, deserting the Loyalist army in the Spanish
Civil War, became a free lance secret agent for the British side against the Nazis, luring Shickelgruber into the race for a Super-Bomb
while withholding vital information that would have made the Nazi
project a success.
CHRONICLE OF THE ORACLES OF MENO, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE RAG DOLL
A. S. 1943, Christmas at Auschwitz
How a young, brilliant, blind chemist, soon to perish in a gas chamber, afraid it was all for nothing, was given unmistakable proof her life was divinely touched.
CHRONICLE OF THE RAG DOLL
CHRONICLE OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY'S SECRET PANELS
A. S. 1944, Questioning the Sphinx
How nuns guarded what came to be known as the world's most famous tapestry, the one detailing the Norman invasion of England in 1066, and how an American nun, an expert in tapetries, discovered additional panels that had not been sewn onto the masterpiece--panels that had been kept secret for the obvious reason they were found so disturbing because they were so prophetic about the world to come.
CHRONICLE OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY'S SECRET PANELS, Vol. IV, Retro Star
CHRONICLE OF THE BROKEN GLASS
A. S. 1945,
1. Legacy
How the victorious chieftains at the Potsdam council meeting from Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union, in the name of peace started the "War of Ice," and how Britain's "Tube Alloys" nuclear project came to nothing with suppression and disappearance of vital M-2 intelligence, and President Truman's ace in the hole, the Manhattan Project's Super-Bomb, fizzled at Alamagordo--apparently forcing America to join forces with Britain and Stalin's Russia to fight on to the finish with conventional forces against Premier Hideki Tojo's best troops and, unknown as yet to the Allies and their war planners, a whole nation swept by Kamikaze, the "Divine Wind".
CHRONICLE OF THE BROKEN GLASS, PART I, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
2. The Pack Rat
How a peddler of information, selling whatever he dug up to the highest bidder, happened on a deadly superweapon--one of three that Senhor Averinata had offered the British--that later would be used to help tip the scales against America in favor of the United Nations and a world government. To the Jews the crushing of the wine glass in a Jewish wedding recalled the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in ANNO 70, but to the Basques, it meant the whole universe was shattered--never ever to be put back together as it had been. (How could he barter and trade the destinies of whole nations as if they were trinkets and trifles? Peddlers, like foraging rats, consider only the present moment, and the penny or two gained or lost--never the long haul, which is, for a peddler, far to frightening to even consider in a rodent-type mind. Without the ship, the rat would drown in the open sea. Yet it infests the ship, spreads its diseases with its own dirt, and gives the crew a deadly plague, and the ship, without anyone to guide it to safety, strikes a rock and sinks, drowning the rats who caused the disaster. This has happened countless times. Their own nature, thus, gnaws off the rope that holds them above the pit. Pity the civilization where such men, such vermin, proliferate and gain high office! And you can always tell the end is near when such are numerous and run free, from deck to deck!).
CHRONICLE OF THE BROKEN GLASS, PART II, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
3. The Angels of USS Indianapolis IP
How on July 29, following the successful test of a new death ray in the first week of July, that dissolved atomic structures and could fuse human flesh to metal, a battleship was loaded with the deadly "gadget" and sailed for Tinian, an island in the Marianas Chain. Locked in a steel box bolted to the deck of the captain's cabin, the weapon that would knock the Japanese on the home islands to their knees would be assembled in the secret facility at North Field on Tinian, then deployed by aircraft over the first test cities of Tokyo and Kyoto, the two most revered cities in Japan and the centers of Japanese cultural life. How the best laid plan of the war came to naught, with details of immense tragedy and even angelic intervention that were so explosive in nature they could never be revealed to the American public.
CHRONICLE OF THE BROKEN GLASS, PART 3, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
4. The Divine Wind
How Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands,
ultimately succeeded but without superweapons proved so costly to America and Russia that they had cause to recall King Pyrrhus of the Greek kingdom of Epirus, who conquered Roman armies on their home turf but sustained such heavy losses he complained in his famous statement known for its unforgettable pathos, "Another such victory and I am ruined!"
CHRONICLE OF THE BROKEN GLASS, PART 4, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE OF NAKING
A.S. 1947, A light in Prison; A.S. 1950, Victory in Shibuya
How a flier with Colonel Doolittle on his surprise raid of Tokyo afterwards was himself surprised to find there was a way out of the all-consuming hatred he felt for the Japanese guards who were starving and torturing him and other P.O.W.s.
How the mission commander of the Japanese squadron that devastated Pearl Harbor's naval force met the flier after his release and how a great light was passed from the dark hole of Nanking to the former mission commander in Tokyo"s Shibuya Train Station.
CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE OF NANKING, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE WINTER SACRIFICE
A. S. 1947, 1. Winter's Child
How deeply the alien star's rays penetrated postwar America, and how an old farmer's beloved son was killed in the Wioteheka hi, Month of Terrible Moons.
2. Plain View Farm
How two deaths in a fiery plane crash were needed to thaw the frozen hearts of two other men.
CHRONICLE OF THE KILLER BEAR'S DESCENT
A. S. 1951, The Bear and the Lamb How Djugashvilli fared, while on the operating table in the Kremlin, as a small army of surgeons desperately tried to preserve his life after a massive sroke; how they failed and Djugashvilli, an atheist, found himself still alive, imprisoned in an Afterlife cell which could only be described as hellish. How things got progressively worse for him, as he encountered a strange Jew wearing a prayer shawl and next faced a Judge sitting on a throne so immense it couldn't be anyone less than God sitting upon it, and how he was judged by the testimonies of thirty or so millions he had had tortured and slain, and how after that he found himself shunted into a burning lake of blast furnance intensity, and how he, like all the others in it, were forgotten.
CHRONICLE OF THE KILLER BEAR'S DESCENT, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE MAN LIKE A BRIDGE A.S. 1956, The Search How a young woman of the First World discovered the way back to her lost childhood faith, a faith that carried her all the way to Third World Cameroon wilderness in West Africa where it finally set its roots deep and briefly bloomed.
CHRONICLE OF THE MAN LIKE A BRIDGE
MYSTERY CHRONICLE OF THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY A. S. 1962
The Phantom Ship How Lt. Greg Culpepper's life and career took a radical turn and plunge to the bottom of society after a storm at sea and his sighting of the R.M.S. TITANIC going down as he was inspecting the lighthouse facilities at Cape Disappointment and North Head on the mouth of the Columbia River, Washington State.
MYSTERY CHRONICLE OF THE 50th ANNIVERSARY, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF EDYTH'S GOLDEN CROSS
A. S. 1963, A Truth Not Told How Miss Edyth Hamilton, humanist, classicist, and world-renowned authority on Greek and Norse mythology, was strangely confronted on her deathbed with certain false premises that undergird her whole life-work.
CHRONICLE OF EDYTH'S GOLDEN CROSS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE LADY OF THE SPARROWS, A Tale of Old New York and Central Park
A.S. 1964, Lucky's Big Strike How Lucretiza Tisdale, a spinster
lady in her nineties,
fed
the sparrows of Central Park faithfully every day and how her death under the wheels of a beer truck brought
changes,
through the very sparrows she had given soda crackers, that she could not otherwise have achieved at her age and
with
her
insignificant, sparrowlike strength.
CHRONICLE OF THE LADY OF THE SPARROWS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE FIGHTING ANGEL, PARTS I AND II
A. S. 1963
How the Swensons, a young American newlywed couple, in training for the mission field, took a break from language school in Paris, and came to a crisis of their relationship and a man's faith in God on and beneath the Mount of St. Miguel, the Fighting Angel.
CHRONICLE OF THE FIGHTING ANGEL, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
PART II: How the Swensons came to share their Christmas with the Fulani Tribe in Cameroon, West Africa, and how their cheer spread from there as far as the stars to a lost tribe of the Alpha Centaurii.
CHRONICLE OF THE REVIVAL OF HAGIA SOPHIA
A.S. 1968 How Lidia, a Greek Orthodox nun, ventured from her safe refuge in a convent in Athens, to return by tourist boat to her lost homeland in the Turkish nation that had forced her family to flee for their lives in the savage. almost genocidal war that broke out between the Greeks and Turks after World War I. How she learned things she did not expect from her day trip and contact with the enemy occupying her people's chief city and seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople and East Rome. How she received a gift she would always treasure--and ceased feeling herself robbed by the Turks though they had taken her Greek homeland as their own and pushed out virtually all her fellow Greeks.
CHRONICLE OF THE REVIVAL OF HAGIA SOPHIA, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE SHOW ME STATE'S PROPHET (EARTH I)
A. S. 1966, Elijah's Mantle How young and aspiring Brad Bright Jr. dreamed of becoming a prophet to "Holy Spirit-led, on-fire" Pentecostal churches in Missouri, his home state. How his promising life was cut short by a fatal collision with a tree when he was driving his truck home from a church youth meeting, and how his dream of ministry was defeated only temporarily, as a bit later he was brought back to serve with Elijah's mantle in the war against the AntiChrist Beast and his prophet during the post-Rapture Tribulation Period.
CHRONICLE OF THE SHOW ME STATE PROPHET, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE GIANT CHIEFS
A. S. 1972, Two Sayings of Uwe Hantsbo Regarding the Atlanteans:
Elektra's Sad Fate, and Atlantis on the rocks, anyone?
How the Earth's tribe of original giants that stood like the tallest trees on Earth lived in a vast land that sank beneath the Eastern Sea.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLUE BRIDGE SALIENT A. S. 1973-1978 Even while the armies of France, Britain, and America struggled unsuccessfully in southern Asia to push back the communist forces from the north, a greater battle was being fought among the stars. How Atlantean star fleets combined with the red star and other star-stones to force an entry into the Great Nebula in order to destroy the protective forces centered at the Blue Brige. How, nearly successful, they were rebuffed, forcing an Atlantean subcommander to retreat to Earth.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLUE BRIDGE SALIENT, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF HANTSBO'S NOTES
A.S. 199?, On the Bipedal Workforce of 1994tk66--A Flying Texas
How Uwe Hantsbo discovered on a planetoid a most interesting cache of mutants, freeze-dried specimens of the very kinds that had been proposed by a Washington geographical society in its magazine to be authentic human prototypes proven by science and archeology. The only problem, as Hantsbo points out, is that they were found all mixed together, obvious contemporaries, not separated by millions of years or mere hundreds of thousands as was said to be the case by the East Coast Brahmin evolutionists entrenched in the powerful, elitist geographical society.
CHRONICLE OF HANTSBO'S NOTES, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE ICE BIRD, PART II A. S. 1973, Voyage of the PRION Inspired by Shackleton's legendary heroism, how an exlorer from New Zealand set out to be the first to circumnavigate Antarctica in a small boat solo, and stumbled into an unknown "Devil's Triangle" of ancient Atlantean orgin just off East Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf that changed his course so radically he was propelled in space and also time as far as an ancient Atlantean outpost opposite the gate of the Great Nebula of Orion--the very site of what Tennison the Poet Laureate of Britain described as holding a "vast mystic charm."
CHRONICLE OF THE ICE BIRD, PART II, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
MYSTERY CHRONICLE OF THE WHITE CANOE
A. S. 1977, Fairwind in Deep Waters
How a young electric plant operator of mixed working class and New England blue blood background takes a cruise into the unknown mysteries of time and space aboard what had first seemed a New York based cruise ship on its way to Peru.
MYSTERY CHRONICLE OF THE WHITE CANOE, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF THE ICE BIRD, PART III A. S. 1978, Cavendish in the Sky with Diamonds A somewhat crusty curmugeon of a retired journalist, in remission from cancer but angry over the recent loss of his wife to the same disease, reflected on the supreme irony of his life. He had planned his retirement so differently! He had just begun writing poetry, meditations, and music under a nice nom de plume when his new, promising, third career of letters and music was stopped right in its tracks by a disaster in his own home: his wife had taken deathly ill. Cancer! Now he was too sick to go on writing and composing--even though the time to do it was his again, lying heavy on his weak, trembling hands. Feeling like the icy, polar coulds of Global Freezing would hang over his head until he died, he goes out into his ruined and half-frozen back yard and changes places with a Prion, a polar bird that has wandered into his garden and died. Somehow the bird in death becomes him, giving him wings of a starship that can touch the farthest stars and Orion, Gateway to the Morning, where something bright and shining with destiny for everyone on earth seemed to open to him.
CHRONICLE OF THE ICE BIRD, PART III, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF FOXY PASSES A. S. 1983 How Skip Cavenish, alias Stuart Hawkins, wrote a poetic tribute and, drawing upon his first career in vaudeville, made a last and notable performance of it at the Capitol theatre before a packed house of Washington State socialites, government leaders, and the wealthy. How the very people preyed upon by his former schoolmate, Franklin Delano "Foxy" Benedict,
the capital's foremost "facilitator" and master of the government patronage system,
watched in growing disgust and anger as the bizarrely costumed Hawkins tore Foxy's mask off in verse after verse; how the old fox could still run (or at least roll) from his pursuers, but he still could not escape his and his enemy Cavendish-Hawkins' destinies being woven together in a strange, future cyber-world that neither could have imagined, long after Foxy and his nimble "smarts" had suffered an Ichabod-like fate.
CHRONICLE OF FOXY PASSES, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE LADY OF THE ANCHORED
A.S. 1983
On the Trail of St. Paul
How Prunella, a sedate altar guild woman from the Midlands, England, on tour with a cruise ship company in the Middle East, finds release from a crushing depression over the accidental death of her daughter.
CHRONICLE OF THE LADY OF THE ANCHORED, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE SURVEYOR OF THE QUEEN'S PICTURES
A. S. 1983-,
The Knight of Darkness
How Sir Anthony Blunt and his fellow Cambridge-educated colleagues became involved in a secret spy ring inside the British secret services, serving not Fascism but Soviet Russia during part of the Second World War and for some years of the following Cold War with Soviet Russia. How Sir Anthony "retired" from being a double agent to being the Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, with the responsibility for all the Queen's artworks in the royal palaces, but how he was exposed as a spy and found guilty but was allowed to retire with some dignity to his home, while his co-conspirators fled to Soviet Russia. How in dying they singly and together discovered an
Afterlife their Darwinistic beliefs had denied was possible, which delegated them to a new venture just as exciting as betraying their own country and serving her arch enemy--a contest involving the Golden Fleece and a rival ship called the Argo.
CHRONICLE OF THE SURVEYOR OF THE QUEEN'S PICTURES, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE SACRED COWHIDE PAINTER
A. S. 1987, Ira's Letter to the 11,000th Century
How an artist's paintings for a B.I.A.-Lakota Christmas arts and crafts competition were preserved for a tribe of Wasichu lost seemingly forever among the lodges of the stars.
CHRONICLE OF THE SACRED COWHIDE PAINTER
CHRONICLE OF THE LION'S DESCENT, A. S. 1995, "The Lion's Descent," Part I, "The Lion's Legacy," Part II, How a U.S. Supreme Court Justice who was a very nice and likable gentleman became responsible for a once great and godly nation's descent into self-destructive depravity and violence and also for more deaths of Americans than were slain in the death camps of Himmler and Hitler (Earth I), and how he fared in Hades (Hell) after his death.
CHRONICLE OF THE LION'S DESCENT, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF UWE HANTSBO'S NOTES
A. S. 199?, On the Bipedal Workforce of 1994tK66, A Flying Texas
How Uwe Hantsbo points out certain rather glaring flaws in the evolutionary timeline and evolutionary theory after seeing the flaws in question with his own eyes, frozen specimens of hominids and so-called human precursors, flying aboard a Texas-sized hunk of rock; how their existence supports his own view that highly intelligent, highly terrible ante-humans he names as the Atlanteans were responsible for the Dachau-like work camp on the asteriod.
CHRONICLE OF UWE HANTSBO'S NOTES, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE GREAT WEAVER PEOPLE
A. S. 1997, The Secret of Dream Catching
How Horace Brave Scout wanders the Southwest and finds his life-guiding vision among the caves and baskets of an extinct tribe.
CHRONICLE OF THE GREAT WEAVER PEOPLE
CHRONCLE OF THE UTERO-NAUT
A. S. YEAR OF THE CHILD,
PART I,
Orientation
How Shawnta, a 19 year old wannabe careerist like her single mom, was processed at the local abortion mill
newly opened in her black neighborhood.
CHRONICLE OF THE UTERO-NAUT, PART I, RETROSTAR
PART II, The Argonaut
How Shawnta's unborn child (no such thing as "fetus" ever existed on earth), genius that he was,
got going with the name of Jason on a very promising career that
might well have benefited the whole society and probably the world, but was rudely
interrupted by an abortionist's foreseps, scizzors, and vacuum--but also how the Master Plan created by the FC kicked in with a contingency plan to restore Jason's life and future.
CHRONICLE OF THE UTERO-NAUT, PART II, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE PEARLY GATES
A. S. 1998, How a Pearl Was Made
How a farmer's daughter's experiences in life and her decision to be forgiving came to form one half of a gate of heaven.
CHRONICLE OF THE PEARLY GATE, PARTS I-II, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE GRAND PUZZLE--Earth I
A. S. 2001-
How Anatoly, a survivor of a notorious Nazi death camp where Anne Franke and her sister perished along with tens of thousands of other Jews, spent his convalescence and waiting period to go to Israel by playing the lottery after the camp was in the hands of the Allies; how he shattered the laws of probability by never losing and always managing to win back his stake; how this impossible gambling feat came back to haunt him in the last minutes of his life as he lay dying in a Denver hospital, but how the Hound of Heaven led him to win the Jackpot of life, the greatest prize of all.
CHRONICLE OF THE GRAND PUZZLE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE LOST CITY
A. S. 2002, Last Breakfast in the West Wing; Melt-down on Pennsylvania Avenue
How the Wasichu of the U. S., in moral and political decline over against the British Commonwealth ever since Potsdam despite the highly-publicized moon and space programs of NASA, are struck by an invisible enemy and lose all their chiefs at once, and chiefs from the rest of the world come and set up a new council fire for the nation on Manhattan Island.
CHRONICLE OF THE MILLION MAN FLESH-EATER, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE DEAD MOVIE QUEEN
A. S. 2003, The Burning of Coburn How a Hollywood legend found that all her fame, fortune, and feisty feminism couldn't erase the incredible after-death reality that was evidently turning against her--not only did she find she existed when she should have dissolved into nothingness, but all sorts of strange, powerful beings seemed intent on judging her and then throwing her into what appeared to be a Pacific Ocean set on fire.
CHRONICLE OF THE DEAD MOVIE QUEEN, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF MOSHE, HONORGUARDSMAN
A. S. "Night of the Iguana" How on Earth I, Moshe Benlevi, a young Israeli soldier,
a freedom-loving Sabra, was chosen to be a part of Michael Jayson's
honor guard in Israel when the EU President arrived there for the signing of his
"eternal peace" accord he had brokered with the Palestinians and the Israelis. How Moshe tasted sour grapes in the deal and decided to stop the world (at least his slice of it) and get off, but how he was intercepted by someone he hadn't included in his life's equation.
CHRONICLE OF MOSHE, HONORGUARDSMAN, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF DJUGASHVILLI'S SERVANTS A. S. 2024 The Titan of CNNC A hostile takeover by Ted Hunter of a competing Christian network, Alpha-Omega, backfired tragically for him when his wife, converting to Christianity right in his own penthouse on top the CNNC Towers in Manhattan, took A-O's side in opposing him. A takeover that was supposed to be routine, thanks to his billions and an army of corporate lawyers, became a living nightmare when he met a world-class power player in A-0 that more than proved his match.
CHRONICLE OF DJUGASHVILLI's SERVANTS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE FALLEN GIANT
A. S. 2024, How the Dominion of Canada, like the Humpty Dumpty the ill-starred egg man in children's nursery tales, broke up due to the disastrous effects of resurgent glaciation but could not be put back together; how it gained an ephemeral capital called Flin Flondia, once called the "Sunless City," in a book by that name.
CHRONICLE OF THE FALLEN GIANT, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE LAST CAMELOT
A. S. 2170-,
1. Idylls of the King
CHRONICLE OF THE LAST CAMELOT, PART I, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
2. The Panther's Jaws
CHRONICLE OF THE LAST CAMELOT, PART II, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
3. Women and Children First!
CHRONICLE OF THE LAST CAMELOT, PART III, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
4. Le Morte D'X-2914000?
CHRONICLE OF THE LAST CAMELOT, PART IV, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
5. "Merry Christmas from Lyonnesse"
CHRONICLE OF THE LAST CAMELOT, PART V, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
6. Wotoo's Black Box; The Duck King
CHRONICLE OF THE LAST CAMELOT, PART SIX, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
7. Last Wagon Train to Avalann
How the Royal Tribe of Windsor fared in exile on a base off Charon,
Pluto's moon, and how they adapted to the loss of Earth and the
dissolution of the monarchy
CHRONICLE OF THE LAST CAMELOT, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE STAR CHAMBER A. S. 2363, Christ in Atlantis? How Professor Pikkard was tried before a university panel for his heretical views and found guilty without evidence to refute his case.
CHRONICLE OF THE STAR CHAMBER, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF CHRISTUS TRIUMPHANS, Parts I, II, & III
A. S. 2392, The Christmas Factor How Dr. Pikkard, meditating on the mystic Teilhard Chardin's visionary commentary on a medieval painting portraying a "standing" not a "hanging" Christ on the Cross, went on to reflect as well as the Incarnation of Yeshua, and how he concluded that a mystic thread connected all things, even to the blood of the human body, but that he had to wait for a "later" and "younger" talent to make it known scientifically. How, unknown to him, that younger visionary came to be his own predecessor, a Darwininian Establishment-challenging young man named Behe in the 20th-21st centuries, along with his contemporaries, Gabriel Tall Chief and Horace Brave Scout, who traced golden threads and lesser threads in a grand "blood cascade" of their own in the chronicles they brought forth.
CHRONICLE OF CHRISTUS TRIUMPHANS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
Book Two
CHRONICLE OF YOSEF'S PILGRIMAGE A. S. 4117, Flight to Avaris How Yosef and his young wife Maryam, with Maryam's newborn Yeshua the Promised Messiah of the Jews, fled from troops and spies of Herod the Great to safety in Mizraim, and how they journeyed back to Nazareth, their natal city, once Herod was dead.
CHRONICLE OF YOSEF'S PILGRIMAGE
CHRONICLE OF THE SECOND RESURRECTION
A. S. 4150, Secret Sharers, Part II
How the Second Zechariah the prophet, slain in the temple courts alng with many other prophets and saints, rose from the dead as a sign of the resurrection of the Messiah way back in A.S. 30, and how he went into the holy city and appeared to many, after which he was triumphantly escorted by angels to heaven's paradise--a spectacle first recorded, with certain new additions to the Resurrection Rolol, by Secret Sharer Josheph of Arimathea.
CHRONICLE OF THE SECOND RESURRECTION, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
UNCHRONICLE OF THE CHRISTMAS PLAY
A. S. 4 6 5 ?, "Merry Christmas from Lyonnesse," A Play, How a miserly, cruel banker seeks to destroy a whole town he has foreclosed on, closing down the only means of employment, the town mill, and how a small girl, Emily Cogwell, revives faith and hope in the people by refusing to give up her own in the bitter circumstances of poverty and homelessness, and how she turns and saves the banker when he experiences a change of heart after seeing her standing alone in the town square holding the Nativity Scene's Christ Child doll.
UNCHRONICLE OF THE CHRISTMAS PLAY, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE DRIED SPRINGS IP
A. S. 4760, A Chief's Son Named Laughing Waters
How an old chief and his old wife who had no children were
promised a son by God, and the old woman laughed, yet later she
conceived and gave birth to a beautiful son she named Minnehaha.
CHRONICLE OF THE PEARL DIVER
A. S. 5927 -, Shipwreck of Dreams How a despised half-breed, part Keftiuan and part Myceneaean (both nations bitter enemies in the world) and Prince Daedalus do not get along and almost
come to blows over the pretty orphan girl Theseus runs off with, and later after the
girl's death (and the shipwreck of Theseus's dreams) how they find
a way past hatred and revenge.
CHRONICLE OF THE PEARL DIVER, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE FIRE WATER MAKER
A. S. 5931, The Chosen
How a brewery malt masher got herself a mighty warrior as a husband, and how her head was knocked in by other poor women, and left to die,
but a great chief's prayer gained her the ear of the Most High and she was healed.
CHRONICLE OF THE FIRE WATER MAKER, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE BLESSINGS OF THE BREASTS
A. S. 5932-, The Wayward Vine
How the births of two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, comforted and
cheered Joseph in the land of his bondage, but how his beloved
wife and companion's heart turned toward her people and away from her husband.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLESSINGS OF THE BREASTS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
TWIN CHRONICLE OF THE AMBUSHED MAIDENS, TWIN CHRONICLE OF THE AMBUSHED BRAVE
A. S. 5934,
1. Dawn Flower
TWIN CHRONICLE OF THE AMBUSHED MAIDENS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
2. The Prince of Gilead
TWIN CHRONICLE OF THE AMBUSHED BRAVE
How a chieftain's daughter and her maid-servant fought for their
virtue; how the maid-servant escaped to safety and found a young man she could make her husband; how a prince, robbed of all his wealth, was left for dead in the desert, and how he found a greater wampum.
CHRONICLE OF THE BITTER ROOT
A. S. 5938, Abdullah's Return
How good times fattened Abdullah but did not improve his character,
and how resentment and blood revenge took root in his heart, and how
he could not rest until he avenged his brethren's deaths on the head
of the chief of those he held responsible--Joseph.
CHRONICLE OF THE BITTER ROOT, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF FAT WOLVES AND HUNGRY PEOPLE
A. S. 5941, Part I, A Bruised Reed and a Broken Staff; Part II, The Return of the Brothers
How the little family tribe of Joseph's father began to starve in their desert
hogans and needed to go for provision in another country where there was said to be abundant food and water, thanks to a most far-seeing ruler in it who had set aside one fifth of the harvest for seven straight years of abundant harvests.
PART II, CHRONICLE OF THE FAT WOLVES AND LEAN PEOPLE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE FAR-SPEAKING VASES
A. S. 5931-, 1. Secret Diary of Ipu-Pheres (cont. by Benohe-Pheres);
A. S. 5942, 2. Letters of Ipu-Pheres, Jonathan H. Thompkins, and Bertha Mae 3. Letter to Reader by Editor of the 23rd Edition of RETRO STAR series.
How spirit-house shamans who have not yet been born could talk to people in stone tipis which had long since vanished under the ice.
CHRONICLE OF THE FAR-SPEAKING VASES, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF THE BLESSINGS AND CURSINGS
A. S. 5957, Jacob's Last Testament
How all his sons received their future shares in the Promised Land
and how his blessings in some cases seemed more like curses; how
Jacob's embalmed body was carried back to Ken'an and buried with
his father's bones.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLESSINGS AND CURSINGS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE BLESSINGS OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS
A. S. 6011, The Kingdom Pledge
How Joseph, on his deathbed at age 110, prophesied that his bones would not lie forever in Mizraim, but they would be gathered to his fathers in the Promised Land by his people. How seventy five years of great blessing followed Joseph's death, but then enslavement of the Hebrews began. How blessed was the one piece of ground, the field
outside Shechem, owned by the people of Jacob and Joseph.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLESSINGS OF THE EVERLASTING HILLS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF A CLOUDY AND DARK DAY
A. S. 6719, A Mighty Chief Called Barley Cake
How one young brave was chosen by God to fight tribes of thousands of enemies that oppressed and starved his people, coming every year
and taking all their food away.
CHRONICLE OF A CLOUDY AND DARK DAY, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE OF THE GIANT-SCALPER
A. S. 6852, The Runt of Ephratah
How a tribesman of tiny Ephratah, smallest portion of a small country, he himself youngest in his family and despised by his brethren, killed and scalped a giant warrior and became the chieftain of the whole country and one of the most famous kings in human memory and whose second name is spread over the whole earth.
CHRONICLE OF THE GIANT SCALPER, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF THE CHIEFTAIN'S DAUGHTER IP
A. S. 8732, Elektra's Contingency Plan--Implemented
How a chieftain's daughter lost her last sky-canoe and seemingly all her people but found a tribe who didn't know better and took her
along with them.
CHRONICLE OF THE CHIEFTAIN'S DAUGHTER
CHRONICLE OF THE SEVEN STARS, THE GREAT WHITE CHAIR, AND THE END OF EARTH'S SKY-TRAIL AND THE GREAT LAST COUNCIL FIRE (EARTHS I AND II)
Z-Point II
GREAT LAST COUNCIL FIRE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
1. Z-Point Deferred: Battle of the Seven Stars How, on Earth I, the "Light Bringer" Lucifer attacks the Seven Agensl of the Seven Cburches, determined to gain absolute control of Earth I, and how he uses this attack as a feint in order do the most damage he can to his true objective: the Blue Bridge of Orion that contains, he senses, to the Plan of Restoration for both Earths and their Universes.
CHRONICLE OF THE SEVEN STARS, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR
2. Part I: The Sentencing Trial: The Great Assize
Part I How all the people who had done bad things were shown what they
had done and were cast alive into the mouth of a Star-Eater along with all the spirit-creatures that lodged inside the enemy stars. Part II: City of Destruction How the cities and nations were judged and then their names and official seals and insigne cast into the Pit, and all memory erased in the mind of God of their former existence.
CHRONICLE OF THE GREAT WHITE CHAIR, VOL. IV, RETRO STAR
CHRONICLE OF THE BLUE BRIDGE LINKING CHAMPIONS--EARTH I AND EARTH II
How the Bridge once linking the Twin Earths was restored in the Cavern of the Great Nebula of Orion, a work that spanned the ages and completed the destiny of both worlds; how the choice to forgive by one wounded human being, a pioneer Exoduster's daughter from a farm in Kansas, joined the two half-spans together forever.
CHRONICLE OF THE BLUE BRIDGE LINKING CHAMPIONS
2. Homecoming of the City of the Great Chief IP
How the council gathering of the Lamb of God, finished after an eternity of careful construction, came down from heaven and set upon the center of restored Israel, where the Nail-Pierced One and his tribes would rule the Earth's nations for a thousand years until the Final Reaping of the Earth.
Volume V
Beyond the Rapture--An Eschatology Lived,
Chronicled by Horace Brave Scout
CHRONICLE OF THE GREAT CHIEF'S RETURN
A. S. 200?
How Yeshua comes to Earth I, unexpectedly to most people, gathers those few "Wise Virgins" who are prepared, and leaves those who
were tremendously successful followers, they thought, only to find themselves lumped with the ungodly in a world society racing
toward the abyss. How Heloise Turnbull, the televangelist, lost her world-wide organization and wealth along with her husband and family but found new life and a new ministry in Israel where she fled to escape the collapse of everything she had achieved.
PART ONE, BOOK ONE, JACOB'S TROUBLE, "THE VOICE FROM THE GROUND"
"Thief in the Night," Part Two, Beyond the Rapture
"The Spin Shamans," Part Three, Beyond the Rapture
"luv heat and the marcyz boyz," Part Four, Beyond the Rapture
"Hard Choices, Part Five, Beyond the Rapture
"The Wailers at the Wall," Beyond the Rapture
"Shelter from the Storm," Part Seven, Beyond the Rapture
"A Covenant God," Part Nine, Beyond the Rapture
"The Lion Unleashed," Part Nine, Beyond the Rapture
"Retreat to Petra," Part Ten, Beyond the Rapture
Book II, Yom Kippur, Chapter 2, Volume V, Beyond the Rapture
Volume VI
Natal Convergence
by Horace Brave Scout
CHRONICLE OF THE LOST TRIBE
A. S. 1,136,786
How the Alpha Centaurii discovered an archive of Late Twentieth Century artifacts in a time capsule, and information revealing a Magnum Mysterium that revolutionized everything, to the point where
they chose the dreaded White Martyrdom, a final search of the Universe for what they had lost, in which they discover what Ira
Sulkowsky has already shown them in....
"The Christmas Factor"
61000202A-Z, Subfile A1, "Dogon Star Child"
61000202A-Z, Subfile A2, "Lakota Nativity"
61000202A-Z, Subfile A3, "A Victorian Christmas"
61000202A-Z, Subfile A4, "Christmas with James Dean"
"Subfile A4: Christmas with James Dean, A Requiem with Poinsettias"
61000202A-Z, Subfile A5, "A Fawn in Winter"
61000202A-Z, Subfile A6, "A Fulani Christmas"
"A Fulani Christmas," Vol. VI, CHRONICLE OF THE LOST TRIBE, RETRO STAR
61000202A-Z, Subfile A7, "Street of Dreams"
61000202A-Z, Subfile A8, "Winter Rose"
CHRONICLE OF THE LOST TRIBE, WINTER ROSE, VOL. VI, RETROSTAR
61000202A-Z, Subfile A9, Act III, "Christmas from Lyonnesse"
61000202A-Z, Subfile A10, ACT III, "Joseph's Letter"
CHRONICLE OF THE LOST TRIBE, VOL. VI, "Joseph's Letter," RETROSTAR
"Natal Convergence!"
Volume VII
Final Wars...Convergence at Orion
by Horace Brave Scout IP
How two major battles fought for Orion and its secret "Skunk Works" resulted in the destruction of the
chief project, the Blue Bridge, to the point where only half survived in each Universe; and how a single act of an individual was strong enough to unite the two halves into one whole, thereby completing the bridge and defeating the opposing players.
Epilogue II
EPILOGUE II, "THE HARROWINGS OF HADES AND HELL," RETRO STAR
One such champion was Epathroditos of Lindos. A chain of gold with a Nike-emblazoned medal was hung round his neck, and he was given a wreath of victory, made of sacred laurel, to wear on his head. Lifted to the shoulders of his closest contenders for the supreme prize, they carried him from the running field and stadium of the games through the city center and then through the streets as the huge crowd gathered for the games from all over rejoiced and celebrated his achievement.
He was treated with all the honors of a god, and felt like one. His name was immortal, and he would be awarded a statue modeled on himself, which would be set up along the main avenue with the statues of other winning champions of past games. The world would see him as he was in his full strength and youthful perfection.
At the milestone that stood at the end of the main street, however, and old man stood
waiting as the champion was carried there, to be carried back to the city center and set on a throne set up before the main temple where the statues of champions were erected.
There he was to receive his gifts from the city--gold, fine robes, even lands and vineyards for his future prosperity and legacy--he would enjoy his prize as a rich man the rest of his days! Who could be happier than Epathroditus?
The old man cried out to the champion the moment he was close, "O Youth, remember age!"
Despite all the cheering, sounds of harps, and confusion of the crowds at his back, the champion heard the man's words.
"What?" he said. The old man repeated himself.
"Set me down!" the champion commanded his bearers. They hastily returned him to the humble earth where ordinary folk live.
The champion waited as the old man gathered his thoughts and then spoke again. He pointed back toward the city's agora. "There is my statue down there in the Agora, if you look for it! I once was like you--a hero full of youth and glory and honor! Look at me now! Do you see a great hero? Ha! This is coming for you--age and decay and death--and even the forgetfulness of men. I am forgotten! My own family has turned me out into the street, after taking my fine house and vineyards and cattle for their own use! I am ill, and too old to stop them--so they turned me out like a dog too old to
be any good to its master.
No one pays me any heed now, though people still admire my marble likeness! Do not
be taken away by this vanity you now enjoy! It will end like this--a legacy of ashes!"
The old man's words were like cold baths of water, dashed repeatedly in his face. The champion could not dispute a single word. Surely, the old one knew what he was talking about! So, what was he to do now?
The champion bowed to the old man, then turned around to face the crowd of admirers.
Walking back to the Agora on his own bare feet, the hero of the Games went to the
pavilion erected for the giving of gifts. He climbed up as the crowds roared, cheering
and praising him extravagantly as before. Only a few knew what the old man had said that cast such a strange expression on the champion's face, as a dark rain cloud casts on the bright earth before the sky thunders and lightning flashes. He was no longer smiling as before. He looked very sober and grave--a far cry from how he should be taking things as glorious as this day's events and celebrations!
Epahtroditus raised his hand, and the crowds fell silent, all across the Agora and even to the tops of the temples and public buildings where people had climbed for
a view of everything.
"Beloved countrymen, listen to me. You all love me greatly this day, so do as I say, and refuse me nothing. Bring the poor here at once. I will not keep your
fine gifts. Let them have them in my stead. This is my command."
No hero and champion of the Games had never done this before, though the Games had been played for many centuries past counting. No one could understand such a command, but they, nevertheless, obeyed him immediately. The beggars from the gate, and some impoverished widows, were brought before him at the grand pavilion where he sat on a golden throne--a king's own chair brought from a palace.
"Give the gifts to them!" the champion directed like the king for a day that he was.
It was done as he commanded.
The crowd was restless, some people cheering, some arguing, others protesting that he should not give away such fine gifts as gold and jewels and fine clothes to dirty, low beggars and wretched widows who had no one, not even family, to put a roof over their heads.
The champion raised his hand a second time. Again, respectful silence.
"I have once last thing to say, my beloved countrymen." He removed his golden medal and chain from his neck.
"Age will rob me of this in time, so I will not wait for that to happen. I give it back-to heaven, for all glory belongs there anyway. I will not seek to hold what I cannot keep. Only a fool would do that! And since you all know me here, I must seek another country, another city. Farewell!"
Astonishing everyone, the champion gave a wave to the crowd, climbed up to an altar, and threw the gold medal of his triumph onto the flames. Then he turned back down the marble steps, jumped into the midst of the crowd,
and was last seen heading toward a city gate that opened into the countryside. Where he went, no one knew, as his own family could not tell those who came to inquire in the days following.
PLEASE RETURN FOR MORE OF THIS NEW CHRONICLE.
With her slow-witted, meddling brother forever out of the way, Medea is assured she can have her own way without anybody throwing up an obstacle to it. But things are not
going exactly well for her. Growing more impatient and anxious over Jason's lenthening absence, Medea waits aboard her royal ship with her attendants and mariners. She is not one to tolerate idleness in herself or others, however. Since she is a weaver of fine things, she has brought her loom along, and it serves to pass the time as she works on it. She has no great beauty, she knows, to win this champion, but she is assured she can captivate him with her mental powers. And if they fail to be sufficient, there are always the dark arts of sorcery, and she has resorted to them before in a time of difficulty with her father and the various rivals who, after her mother's death, sought to
be his wife and cast his daughter into heavily guarded seclusion in some lonely palace tower.
The only problem is that the herb woman is not within call or reach. She dare not leave her place on the river, for fear Jason's craft will pass by in the night and she will miss her chance at him forever. If she should send a messenger--would he make the
journey back in time? She doubts it, so she has to think of something better. Medea decides she has to make do with whatever she has at hand. She doesn't know the herbs well enough though to hazard a love potion--it might poison her quarry and kill him if she tries to make
it on her own. What to do? She has to try something other than potions, she feels, in case her
arts of womanly persuasion prove too weak to hold a man like Jason. Magic alone, however, can sometimes subdue even the strongest of men. She had seen kings fall under the sway of sorcery and be made to ruin themselves through committing blunder after blunder in statecraft that the worst simpleton would think foolish and mad. One of the kings came to mind particularly. He had a great bush of beard, very black, which he liked to oil and anoint with the rarest perfumes--and his palace was of all white alabaster and ivory--he was Persian, and very luxurious and gorgeous in his tastes. But he could afford it--as all the revenues of a vast domain passed through his hands. His army
was unbeatable--and he reduced every threat on his borders to subservient vassals, or deposed them and put in men of his own choosing. What could possible reduce this great king to nothing? Magic! His entire royal residence--called the White Palace--became infected as well, and everyone in it was brought under the same power that was dragging the king to his doom. She doesn't wish this fate upon the one she loves. Hurting Jason is not at all her object. Rather, she wants only to make him a bit more receptive to her wishes. Her wishes are simple: she wants to keep him as hers alone--and keep him in Colchis. Somehow she would make him forget Achaea and that wretched
city of his! Together they would reign as king and queen. It will be a splendid reign, and produce a great and powerful dynasty, she foresees--if she can withstrain his love of his country and the instincts of strong-willed, homebound Achaean! It is the greatest test of her
wits and her skills of governing unpromising circumstances to her advantage.
For a full day and half of the following one she sits at her loom and thinks over the problem and possible solutions. What would
work best? She finally thinks she might weave something for him--as that is her
best gift from the gods. She might weave a special cap, such as the natives of
the hinterland wore--they were very good in all sorts of weather, cold or hot or windy.
No, he might not want to wear it, as he was so wild and free a man he did not like headwear and seldom
used a bronze helmet even in fighting.
How about--? A cape! That was what he would wear! It was something she knew he
liked to ward off the chill in the nights--or keep him dry on a day of high waves or
strong winds. He had an Achaean dolphin-decorated cape along--but perhaps he could be persuaded to try her new one?
She would weave her very soul into it--praying all the while to her goddess, Hekate, who had never failed her before. It would be irresistable, she thought. She would
make it so warm and beautiful to a man's eye that he would have to take and wear it.
It would be fit for a king, but at the same time be useful to a man like Jason.
What color? What pattern?
She had to work quickly, she knew, in order to complete it in time.
While she worked, she had opportunity to think of other things--her father, for instance. What of him? Would he like this man as his son-in-law?
No matter how many tasks he completed, she knew her father would not
like Jason--he was too great, too much a rival to him. Something had to be done
about her father, she knew. Colchis was not big enough for both Jason and her
father. Well, there was no question in her mind. Either he went willingly into
a country estate and yielded up his crown to Jason, for she would do something
about him she wouldn't like to do--but would do, nevertheless.
More days pass as Medea works hour after hour, even having a lamp lighted for her to continue after dark behind thick netting that keeps off the river's insects. She is praying as she weaves--pouring countless invocations to Hekate over her work as she proceeds. At last! A watchman aboard her ship shouts, "Argo!" Medea drops everything she is doing and goes to the topmost part of her ship. There it is--his ship's sail and mast emerge into sight as the Argo clears the last tangled waterway of the forest-overgrown stretch of river between them.
She hasn't finished the cape! It has no gold as she had planned--only a pattern drawn on it, but, then, Jason was not keen on wearing embroidered robes heavy with gold like her father, she knew. Would he accept something so plain as what she had woven? Hastily, she takes jewels she had along and
stiches them in along the pattern of a sun's rays at dawn--there the sun will catch them and they will glisten.
While she attached the finishing jewel on the cape she orders her royal welcoming flag unfurled--gold and jewels shining on the Colchian dragon-serpent--and wine, and the best of her gold goblets and gold platters are placed near her on a table which stoon will be heaped with a banquet.
By this time the Argo has stopped off Medea's bow, her oarsmen throwing an anchor out. Medea is in her private quarters, the curtains drawn, preparing to meeting Jason dressed in her
best robes.
She is not feeling her best. A messenger has just come with news from Aea--or what had been Aea. She was being sought by the survivors, by certain elders of the city, to see if she would return and
take up the throne in her father's stead and do something for them. The people left int the ruins were helpless against pirates and anyone who had come for loot. Would she be coming soon? they wanted to know.
She had not let the messenger go without her answer: yes! She would be coming soon.
But what could she do, if her father were dead and all his soldiers with him in Hades? All she had now was this one ship--but with Jason at her side--there was still a good chance she could restore the kingdom and the throne of Aeetes her father. Together they could establish a new but legitmate royal line and dynasty. Would Jason
agree to this? Would he? She could not say. All she could do was approach him with her request, at a propitious moment. She knew it was too much to suddenly speak about,w without some womanly preparation first.
Jason finally came aboard, greeted by Medea's dancing and singing musicians. As instructed by Medea, her maids bowed and offered him fruit and wine and cushions upon which to rest, but he was impatient to continue his journey and waved them away.
Seeing Jason's mood, Medea realized she had to do something quickly. She stepped out of her pavilion so that he could see her. Where could they speak privately? It was impossible on her ship, or even on his--so she waited until he came to her, then
she said, "Why are you so hasty to go, One-Sandalled? I have waited a long time here for you!"
Jason peered at her, but she had already turned her face away. "Well, I--" he began, then seeing all the people aboard were listening, he approached her closely. "I was busy! We found the Golden Fleece and were bearing it home when we happened upon your ship. What are you doing here? Why didn't you return to your father? I have no desire to detain you."
Medea's thin shoulders winced, as if he had said something cruel. She moved away a few steps. "Would you be surprised if I said destiny has brought us together for such a time as this?"
Jason, smiling at the thought, shook his head. "Really? What could the reason be--if it is as grand as you say?
Medea turned, darted a glance about the ship then fixed her eye on his. "This is no place for me to share it with you. It is for you alone."
Jason, his face flickering with degree of annoyance mixed with amusement, was
nevertheless curious. "Why not send them off to my ship, and we will be alone here."
"An excellent idea!" she agreed. She gave orders, and her mariners and maids
immediately disembarked to the other ship. While this was going on, Medea picked up
some fruit and wine and offered it to Jason, who now seemed hungry and thirsty for it. He sat down to enjoy the food and drink, while Medea stood and watched him.
Finally, they were alone.
He was through with his meal, and he looked up, wiping his face with the
beautiful linen napkin provided. "Well?"
"I have something for you," she said simply.
He watched her go and get something from her pavilion.
She held it out to him.
"What is this you have here?" he asked, as he took the cape in his hands.
He spread it out between his outstretched hands.
"From your hands?"
She nodded.
He threw it over one shoulder. "It will serve me well, so I thank you, princess!"
He glanced toward his ship. "Well, is this the private matter? Or is there more?"
"There is more," she said, smiling.
Jason looked even more annoyed than before. "You womenfolk! Always keeping back something, to gain some female advantage if you can! What is it? I have little time or patience for feminine wiles!"
Medea walked to one side of him as his eyes followed him. "He thinks he is speaking to an inferior," she said, speaking as if to
a close friend, confiding a secret for that person's ears only--though the matter and its outcome would soon be broadcast, she knew, to the whole kingdom and to the neighboring kingdoms as well. "Yes, that is a man's common mistake--not knowing
what is in a woman can be mightier than a man's imagination!"
Jason's ears visibly pricked up at the sound of that. What could his mistake be--and what could be mighter in a woman than a "man's imagination?"
Everything hung on how she phrased herself in the next moments. Would her wits fail her, at the most
important moment of her career? She had to try, regardless of the risk. To return to
Aea with nothing but her swan ship was unthinkable. To beg was even more unthinkable. She had only one thing to offer this lion-maned, lion-hearted man. But that was common enough in his own kingdom in Achaea's wide-flung realm. A man such as this, with royalty in his blood, could command any woman to throw herself at his feet. But would he respect such a one? She thought not.
No, Jason, in his heart of hearts, was looking for such a woman as her--and would find this woman in no one else. But how was she to tell him this--if he did not see it at the moment? If he sailed away from her now--all was lost--there would never be another opportunity to open his heart's door, to the secret place where he was seeking
the love of his life.
A man respected only a man's intelligence. That she knew about men. When a woman was too cunning for a man, he resented it, even hated her. But a man also despised stupid women, who could be fooled too easily or made to do anything they wanted, without any
resistance. A man wanted, in his heart of hearts, a woman who had to be won--like a prize, like a Golden Fleece guarded by dragons. Anything less was not valued as much, or anything to be troubled about. The only question in her mind was--did Jason
perceive her as something to trouble himself about? Or was she just another woman--of
inferior parts and wits--and, therefore, not to be greatly desired above any other.
She sat down, her arms around her knees, while he remained standing, still staring at her. He wasn't going anywhere, in fact, until he heard what her explanation was. If she had spoken unadvisedly, a mere foolishness just to detain him, he would leave her presence at once!
"I am in mourning," she said, "though my garments are not those of grief, having just heard the news."
Jason's expression turned grave. "Your father? Your brother? What has happened?"
"Both," she said.
Jason glanced about, then back to her. "Well, then, I will do all I can for you!
I will not leave you like this, with no man of your own household to protect you. I will see you safely back to your city and your palace."
Medea shook her head. "I have nothing to return to but ruins. There is no city, no palace, no kingdom. It is all swept away."
Jason gazed silently at her, feeling she had something more to explain than this, and he was right, for she continued. "You would have learned this, and left me to my fate, I
expect, so eager are you to return to your home city with the Fleece of Phrixus, except that I am here in your presence, and you've had nothing but good from my hands to yours--and so you know it in your heart and cannot easily leave me without
trying to help me." She darted a glance at him with her green eyes, and saw him
move restlessly, so she knew her remark had struck home.
"Yes, I am grateful to you, princess! I will do as I said for you. Let us
return to your city, and I will see that you are dealt with accordingly as your
royal lineage and family demands!"
Medea smiled thinly, then turned to him. "I know you will do what good is in your hands to do, but that will be little beside all I have lost."
Jason's mouth fell open, as if he would protest. "But what more can I do? I can not return your father and brother to you! Shall I make a special trip to Hades and bring them out to you? I have some gold and jewels--take it all, if you wish! I need only the Fleece with me anyway and my men!"
She rose and walked away to the stern, and looked southwesterly toward Aea. Jason waited for her, then when she remained there, joined her.
She let him look into her eyes for the first time. "I don't want your gratitude or your favors."
"Then what do you want? Tell me, and if a mortal man can do it, I will do it. Only then please discharge me of all I owe you for your goodness to me, so I can return to my city and my father's house!"
"So I did you good?"
"Yes, I acknowledge it!"
"Then why are you insulting me like this?"
She knew Jason was both surprised and hurt at the same time by her remark.
"Oh, no!" he said. "I would never think of doing thus to you. Surely, you mistake
my intent or my action."
"Oh, no?" she said. Her green eyes narrowed and she looked away toward Aea. "A woman knows when she is being insulted by a man! She doesn't need him to tell her when he has trampled upon her heart as if it were nothing but a trifle!"
Achaeans, she knew, thought nothing much about women's hearts--and Jason could be
no exception. But her remark had stung him--with the thought that he had maybe
broken the laws of hospitality which are sacred to any Achaean. Perhaps he should have thanked her more graciously for the cape she had woven for him?
He glanced at the cape hanging over his shoulder. "It is a fine thing you
wove," he began. "I thank you again for it!"
Medea ignored his words, and returned to his former question. "You wanted to know what I want, so you can be discharged from all duty toward me?"
Of course, he did! Any Achaean would.
She looked him steadily in the eye as any man would. "I gave up everything so that you could succeed, and defied even the wishes of my own father for your sake. You know I did all this for you! I do not have to remind you! So now you would give up trifles in exchange--is that worthy of the mighty one called One-Sandalled? Or is it mean and low of him. Answer me!"
He turned away with clenched fists, as the struggle was so violent, that he could not let her see
the muscles in his face and neck were twitching and bulging.
He threw down his cape, and then stood, looking toward Achaea.
Finally, he came and stood before her. "I would be a thief, as you say, if I
gave you trifles in exchange for your gifts of gold. You gave up everything, I agree,
or risked everything at least for my sake."
He glanced long at his own ship which blazed at the prow with the Golden Fleece.
"But now I see something in your words, for which I thank you. You have been brave
to tell me this to my face! I would dishonor the Fleece if I came bearing it to my city and my people and my father with stained hands and stained heart--stained with
mistreatment and inhospitality and thievery in the household of my host! I cannot do such a thing! What is you wish? Whatever it is, I will do it?"
"I want nothing of that sort from you or any man!" she said truthfully.
Jason was now in agony. He could not believe his own ears. He was beside himself. He wanted only to hear something from her--that was in his power to give Medea, that she rightfully and deservedly had coming to her from him.
"Then I cannot give you anything--if you will not accept it!" he burst out. "Is that
what you want? Will you imprison me in this cage forever? If I go like this, I shall be a wretch and despise myself, and how can I lead my men home in this state?"
Medea now had him where she wanted him--and had dreamt. It was now the right moment to lay it all on the table--to bear the secret of her heart before him, and he could not now--as a man, as an Achaean--despise her, or belittle her as other men would.
Guilt, or the thought he had offended sacred laws against his own host, and, on top of that, left his benefactress, the daughter, with an offer of "trifles" in exchange for
her risking all she had for him--that could bring him to his knees, but still something more was need to win his heart.
Now she could make her move and keep him--but his Achaean blood and heart would always turn from her to his lost homeland--and he would be unhappy, increasingly, in her arms. This she now said to him as Jason listened intently.
Jason was a mighty warrior, but her simple, heart-to-heart words affected him to the quick. It was as if all his armor fell off him.
He reached out and took her hand. They stood quietly some time, hand in hand.
She turned her face up to his. He put his hand over her hair, stroking it gently. Finally, she said, "I won't ask you anymore what I want, Jason. But I do ask this one thing: what is you want? What is it that Jason wants in his secret heart? Could I be what he wants? If so, I will again give up everything I have known for that man--if that man
is true to what he wants, enough to reveal it."
Achaeans were not accustomed to revealing their secret hearts to anyone--leastwise any woman. It is likely that such a thing had never been attempted before. But Medea was not Achaean, and she had brought him to a place where no Achaean had ventured before. He had gone so far as to find, fight for, and win the Golden Fleece--a triumph no other man on earth could
boast of but him. But now it was one step beyond that--to reveal what she was
asking him to do. Would he? Could he? Men and women were not equals--had never been such, not at any time that could be remembered. But here she was asking him something that demanded equality, a thing that no one had conceived of in their world.
Jason, realizing that he was now treading where no Achaean before him had dared or
presumed to tread, was almost afraid. He felt the loss of his manhood's armor far less than the loss of all solid footing beneath his Achaean feet! Where was this
strange and captivating princess taking him? He had no idea. But he could not
escape now from the path onto which she had led him. He had to go on--to find the end of it--and whether he could still live and breathe there as a man--he could not now tell.
"I think you have bewitched me!" he said, grasping her delicate arms carefully like grass stems in his powerful, bone-crushing hands. His breath was
labored as he pulled her closer. "This is a strange thing to my mind! I have never
thought such things."
Medea sank toward him, and Jason sat down, with her lying across his chest.
She pushed him back after a moment or two. He looked at her, and she had to tell him the truth.
"If we let ourselves share love, and I bore your son, I would be hunted down by every usurper and claimant for the throne of my country, and forced to be his wife--and my son? He would be slain as a rival. No, it is better we do not become man and wife."
After she said this, he had only this word which was very difficult for him, an Achaean and a leader of Achaeans, "Would you want me to be your slave? I would do anything for you, give up anything I have."
Medea stroked his forehead. "No, I always was yours--so you are too late for that
It cannot now be offered me. It would be a trifle, you see."
"Then what? I have nothing left."
She did not answer.
He turned back to her question, without her reminding him. "You wanted me to say what I wanted in my heart. Is that what you want to know? How can I tell you? I did not know myself until you asked me. Then it was revealed to me."
Green eyes, like two glistening emeralds only more alive, gazed deeply into Jason's shining, ebony-black ones.
They found much to talk about from this point on. Lovers usually do. But it is not
a good thing to repeat lovers' secrets, even in a love that is impossible, as this one clearly was.
He could not remain in Colchis--a lion pacing back and forth in his cage, his spirit broken. She would not try to keep him. But she was found to be
the desire of his heart. Together, they would be most unhappy, even if they shared
incredible bliss for a time. These were the things woven into their destinies that they could not change, because neither would deny themselves for the sake of making a slave of the other, or a mere plaything. They both respected each other now too much to play such low games. Jason saw her as greater than any man, in a true sense. She was
more than a man, and somehow more than a woman.
Her swan ship followed his ship down to Aea. There hers remained. There she gave up being a royal princess. There was, without a kingdom, no point to the pretence now. She took a humble farm and vineyard, fortified it as best she could, and moved there, learning husbandry and viticulture with her good wits. When she grew old, she knew she had done the best thing--even though her heart had
been cut in two and still bled as if the wound had just been made, though many years had passed over the wound since the day Jason's ship departed her shores.
Sometimes, as in any port or shore where ships put in for rest or local provisions, stories came by the lips of merchants and wayfarers about the world-famous Jason the king of Iolkos--and she was glad to hear anything they could tell her. But
gradually the stories became more and more fantastic. She heard that a princess of royal blood had accompanied him from Colchis, and treacherously slain many a person with her poisons and then been betrayed by Jason who sought out other women by the score. What a monster they had made of her! she laughed. If only they could see her now--trimming grape vines,
hoeing the rows of vegetables, picking the fruit trees! Her hands, no longer delicate, slender, and fine, with rings of gold set with jewels, were now brown and wrinkled. Her crystal-like, green eyes were dim--faded with the sun--
but once they had been filled with the gazed of a man who loved her more than anything
else in his world--the eyes of a great man. That man's love for her alone was enough as she
thought back over her long life and what she had let him keep. To keep what you will eventually lose--what wisdom was there in that? She had truly gained him only by giving him up. For she knew she always had his heart--and there would never, never be another woman there to take her place. In his heart, she would always be beloved and sought after. Unlike the Golden Fleece, he would always be seeking her there. For Medea, that was more than enough
to repay her other losses, and, strangely, she felt his arms had never ceased to hold her.
And Jason? What did he have of her whom he knew he loved when he sailed away forever from Colchis?
He paused now and then on the voyage to touch the jewel of gold she had given him. It was a strange ornament, with a symbol he had never seen. She had handed it to him on parting, saying only it was engraved with an ancient sign of her people, of the one God Most High that they once knew and served. There as an ancient story that went along with this pecular sign of two cross-beams: that a great Lord and Savior would come to set the people of Colchis free some day, one who would bear this very sign on his breast.
Though it did not look Achaean at all, Jason attached it to his ear.
This seemed a strange thing at the time--and he had thought nothing about it. Only later, when he had cause to think more about the things she had said concerning it, did he begin to understand a little more. The jewel burned in his mind's eye even in sleep! He saw it grow and tower over the whole world, in fact. Men of every nation ran, crawled, flew through the air, to seek the refuge of its very shadow! It was as if one look at it was sufficient to save them from the dark clouds all around them. There at the foot of the towering sign of cross-beams, light poured down upon the huddled masses clinging to it for life--and there he saw himself!
Not only himself, he saw Medea! And Mopsos!
The mighty Jason awoke from that sleep with a whole new set of eyes, as he
leaped up to stand at the prow with the Golden Fleece shining upon it, its rays greeting the rays of the morning sun.
Each port city had detained them, in order to present them with special festivities, parades, games, and celebrations, not to mention gifts. The ship soon filled with the gifts--which were enough to make all of them rich the rest of their lives.
As for the Golden Fleece, it was so beseiged by people wanting to touch it, that Jason had to station guards at the prow day and night to keep the Fleece from being carried off or torn in pieces by souvenir hunters. People thought it was magical too, and
were worshiping it like a god would be worshiped. Priests came and offered their temples to house it, expecting huge revenues if they could feature such a prize in their sanctuaries, but Jason declined each offer--he wanted only to return home with it.
When the ship could hold no more treasure and flowers and fine crafted things given them, Jason hired a ship to carry them, so that the Argo could be kept free for their own use. Now there was room to rest on the cleared deck, when they were sea-going, and a weary Argonaut took a break.
In this way Mopsos was given a voice and music and a harp, and he sang melody after melody, refreshing the spirits of men, women, and children for many years, until branches threw back and the music of the wind-strummed strings was finally stilled.
Jason, grown old, sent men back up the mountain to restore the Harp of Mopsos, but it was too late--a woodsman had found it and cut it down. All that could be saved was taken down to Jason, who had a harp made of it for one of his grandchildren who showed promise in music. As soon as he could, he taught the boy about Mopsos mighty in wisdom, and a song was composed that honored him.
He turned and closed the door behind him carefully, then moved toward the light that was coming in from the upper windows of the first room.
His nerves were on edge already, for the house struck him as too quiet somehow. It was now growing dark, and less light was coming in, which didn't lessen the sense of foreboding he felt.
He came to the curved archway leading to the rest of the mansion's many rooms,
a staircase leading to upper floors as well as doors opening to the terrace.
Here his eyes fell upon a strange dark stain on the tiled floor.
The big puddle of stuff on the floor--blood? He knew it was, but his mind was protesting all the while. Things like this didn't happen to someone like himself. He was a small-town Georgia boy. There weren't people being murdered in his town like this--maybe in big cities, which he sometimes heard about. And sometimes things went wrong out in the logging camps--but that was to be expected, with all the drinking and fighting that went along with the rough and tumble types that did the work. But it had never touched his life, what went on
in such places. But now--here it was--smack in front of his face. First Ugur, then someone in the Cayman household! Maybe his head wound was acting up a little too. He still couldn't grasp it, or think that it was actually happening to him. He had been raised to be a part of respectable, quality society--as far as Makon knew respectability and quality society, that is.
Nevertheless, he had to continue what he had started. He had to find the Caymans, or at least a servant, before he could decently get back to his own reason for coming to Multan. There had to a a good reason for the dinner being put off like this and the house left unattended, he thought.
He opened a door to one of the larger rooms, and it was a master bedroom, he could tell.
In one end stood a crib decorated with colored beads. Was it the Cayman baby's? he wondered.
He went over to it and saw the baby was in the crib, but something was wrong. The baby was lying too still. The baby wasn't even breathing, as it lay with eyes gazing up without any flickering of eyelashes. It was then he noticed the oxygen tank, lying on its side under the crib, and attached to it a long plastic line for
feeding air through the baby's trachea.
He had to get some air and clear his mind if he could of the sight of the dead baby.
The terrace doors were not shut, he saw they were open, and he pushed through and
went out onto the terrace. A cool breeze hit his face at that moment, and he
drank it in for a moment as his mind whirled with thoughts he could not control. What was he to do? Where were the parents? Who had done these terrible things to the Caymans? Who would kill an innocent, helpless, sick baby by pulling out its oxygen tube? What kind of monsters would do that? What had happened to the servants and the Caymans?
He took only a few steps and saw a pool in front of him under an elevated wing of the
house.
What were those dark objects lying in the water?
He went to the pool's edge and looked. The bodies----Mr. and Mrs. Cayman? Who else could it be? But why? What had they done to anyone to deserve death like this?
Likewise, when Homer came to a crossroads, and finally began going down a street--really no more than a cobbled lane or path--that led down beneath a high retaining wall that formed the western boundary of the Capitol District, his destiny
was set in a kind of suddenly congealed concrete.
Fortunately, the unform had a lot of pockets, the ones on his pants large enough for the ferret, if only the varmint would stay put. As soon as Rainy was in his new home, and the flap down over the pocket and clasped, Homer was on his way.
He had just stepped out of the alley at the other end when he saw a big army truck being loaded in the street with Grey Wolves. A sergeant, standing duty at the tailgate, spotted Homer just as he tried to shrink back into the alley before he was seen.
Whatever the sergeant was saying, Homer could not mistake the man's eye on him and his barked command.
He had no choice, as the sergeant kept motioning and yelling angrily at him to join the convoy. When Homer reached the truck, the sergeant raised his club as if he was going to hit him for being so slow to obey, but then he dropped his arm, hearing an officer's command summoning him further down the convoy of trucks. Homer saw his chance now to run for it. But he hesitated. The sergeant would probably see him high-tail it, and would pursue him--and deserters, he knew, would be shot. Homer did what he had to do. He climbed aboard.
Homer, trying to hold on to his place, thought about his predicament, nhow it couldn't be worse. He was trapped!
Where were they going? To some den of the Grey Wolves? He knew he would soon be finding out. What would he do then?
Would he have a chance to slip away as the troops got out of the truck? He had no idea. Perhaps the sergeant would see to it he went with the others. Well,
there was nothing else he could do except hope he might have a chance to escape when the truck stopped moving.
It is strange that thoughts come at times like Homer's last minutes before the truck pulled up its destination--the Grey Wolf's den where his paramilitary force had their quarters and training camp. Of all people, Faye came to his mind. She was asking him once again the question that was the most difficult for him to try to answer. He could even see her asking it--with that unwavering, eye-to-eye contact she maintained, making him squirm a bit as he struggled to put her off.
"Just think of the strange god you believe in, compared to the wonderful one I know--and
why don't you want to see yourself if He is real or not by calling to Him by His Name--rather than just holding blindly on to the old
tales you have been fed since birth?"
"But I'm perfectly satisfied with mine, the Only True God!" he shot back, trying not to turn his eyes away from her smiling stare.
"Oh--then why aren't you at peace inside? I'm at peace! You can see that for yourself! A God who can't give his people peace, what kind of a God is that?
Homer, you really have nothing, not even faith, just a lot of rules and trusting in your own good deeds--admit it! If you had peace, real peace, you'd be a completely different person inside. You'd be happier than you've ever been--and stay that way too."
Homer couldn't think of anything to counter that. Despite the fact his religion taught him she was an infidel, she had him nailed, and
he could not deny the fact that no one in his religion, not even the iman, had real peace in his heart--Ismani--despite all their fasts, giving to the poor, prayers and prostrations on prayer rugs, etc.--were always
uncomfortable, always wondering if when they died whether they would go to the hell-flames or not, since not one person--not even the Prophet of Isma--had been assured
he was spared and would go to heaven.
Just as he was thinking this, the truck slowed in the convoy, and stopped
abruptly, throwing everyone forward. They had arrived, and the hangar with the nuclear-sub hunting dirigible loomed overhead--the headquarters and training camp for the Grey Wolves.
As he opened the door to get in front with the driver, the general
shook his head--rapping the seat beside him with his whip.
The major scowled as Homer slid in, and then closed the door. The limoisine
shot off.
The moment they were moving, the general turned to Homer. "They believed I had to
be the Grey Wolf's brother at least, I look so much like their leader--and it worked. I got you away from there. They would have killed you a few minutes later--after
you had been found out."
Homer just stared. The general was speaking to him in Georgian--and
what he said was no less stunning.
"Who are you?" he blurted out, when he finally got his breath back.
The man smiled, tapping the glass in front of them that separated them from the driver. The driver turned, and the man slid the window open and gave a command in Multanese, then shut the window.
He turned to Homer. "I just directed him to take us directly to the Capitol. The collapsing Parliamentary Government is having a last session. The Grey Wolf, Zeki, is on hand in the same building, for taking over the government. In an hour the supreme power will be handed to him officially by the out-going parliament, which doesn't dare side with the Leftists anymore, since they are crushed and powerless, their leader
executed. But this is not all that you need to know. You must do what I now tell you. This is your purpose in coming here--"
"Wait!" Homer protested. "I'm not under your command. I'm not in the military. I don't have to listen to you, a person I've never seen before in my whole life! I have my own reason for coming here--and it has nothing to do with your stupid politics. I am getting out of this mess of yours--stop this car--I won't bother anyone--I am leaving for home!"
The man in the general's uniform shook his head and smiled. "It's too late for
running away to the safety of your grandmother's home in Makon. You came here seeking your father, didn't you? That was a right thing for you to do as you became of age. But he is dead--the Grey Wolf executed him just a few hours ago, along with his wife and child--your step-brother. I'm afraid your father and his family couldn't be saved from their fate. He was in a battle with his own brother for the throne--and he lost."
Homer's blood ran cold. Was he hearing what he just heard? he wondered. Or was he dreaming all this? His father--Dr.
Cayman? Dead? His infant step-brother dead with him! Hearing this, Homer's whole quest in life collapsed into utter ruins. What was the point in going on? His dream of finding his father was shattered. At that moment all Homer wanted to do was stop the world and get off. But the big car continued to speed swiftly back toward the Capitol, only with far more ease than the convoy truck, gliding along the road without any sound or the slightest
feel of the rough road.
He had his hand on the door handle--and meant it. But the "general" smiled. "No, you won't. The doors are locked, until you hear me out, that is. And this is what you must do when we arrive. Are you going to listen before you decide to go along with it or not?"
Homer realized she had no choice at the moment, so he nodded.
"Very well," the "general" sighed. "I look just like the Wolf's brother, as I said, though the officers we just met don't know his twin brother altered his looks a long time ago, and now is dead, slain by his own brother, who like him is a slave to the same Fiery Stone that is drawing the whole world to fatal strife and destruction. The guards at the Capitol too will not know the whole story. They will be impressed enough to let me and you into the building. Once in, I'll lead you straight to the Wolf. I repeat, his name is Zeki in Multan, but his real name is Zeto. I am so sorry, you have to hear this, and soon you will be setting eyes on your father's murderer, but you need to know the circumstances, otherwise you won't know what best to do about it. This man of blood is not even human.
Neither am I. You are only half a human--part of you is the same as Zeto. You are carrying a ring, are you not? It accounts for at least half of the trouble the world is experiencing right now."
Indeed he was carrying a ring! He had forgotten it, along with Rainy, but now he wondered, "What does that have to do with all the rest he had just been told?
Now he recalled something more--whose it was. But where was she?
As if the "general" could read his thoughts, he commented, "She's being held in the Wolf's den,
close to where you first landed when you got out of the convoy truck. I couldn't set her free just then and make a disturbance that would have involved you, but I will do it later. She is in the torture room, though they won't kill her until they have located what they are after. They have been trying to obtain her topaz ring, and when they know where it is, they will punish her for what she did to Miss Multan, so they haven't finished with her. But they are too busy right now with the demonstration organizers they hauled in, and won't be hurting her anymore--and they have more important matters on their minds after taking over the government and the country. This is just the beginning of the killing and purges they have planned, as they follow the dictates of two Fiery Stones."
Homer's head was spinning with all this absolutely astounding information, most of which he could not
grasp, since he had no prepartion for any of it. Who and what was this man? How was he going to set Talulah free? What kind of power did he have anyway? He wasn't human, he had said--so what on earth was he anyway? A devil? An angel? And what were these "fiery stones," that had such power they could lead the Grey Wolves to do what they were doing? He had many questions, but the "general" kept speaking.
"I'm sorry I cannot answer all your questions right at this moment. We will soon be at the Capitol, so you must listen carefully, Mighty O. Just this much more--will you do it? If you agree, then I will be able to release the captive you are concerned about, and return her to her home!"
"Not until you tell me exactly who you are!" As for "Mighty O," what was that? Homer had no time to ask.
"I am called the White Angel," the general replied. "There is no time for more questions. There is a coup at the government palace. A war of all the nations is about to break out at its conclusion, if the new leader takes over. He is worse than any before him. He will not be allowed to rule the world. I was sent to guard and help you defeat him!"
Homer tried to think of his options--but what other choice did he have? He wanted Talulah to be set free, so that part he agreed to, nodding to the general. "All right," Homer said. "Take her out of this country if you can! I will stay and do whatever
you want!"
The general did not smile, but he bowed his head. "It will be difficult for you, Mighty O to overcome the man of evil, but
follow me in, and you will be shown what to do, even when you do not know who is helping you."
The general handed him a coat. Homer gaped at it--it was his! How had the White Angel found it?
"You might as well wear it, for you are my aide, and can dress in civilian clothes."
Homer put it on, glad to feel more like himself in it, and Rainey too preferred the coat pocket to the uniform, and quickly transferred to it.
There they were met by hundreds of Grey Wolves, all bristling with weapons and blocking their path.
All the general had to say was, "I've come to see Generalissimo Kemal Zeki! Stand aside!"
All the Grey Wolves, hearing this, immediately saluted and stood aside, and they proceeded.
As they climbed the grand marble staircase to the floor of the general assembly, a Grey Wolf officer and two aides waited to salute the general at the top of the stairs, then lead them to the Generalissimo himself in the office which he had just commandeered from the deposed prime minister of Heruka-Ratna.
The moment that they reached the double doors of the prime minister, the Grey Wolf stepped back with his men and the General turned to the major. "You are not needed here, officer--I will show myself in to the Generalissimo, so return to your
former duty station!"
The Grey Wolf's face showed his struggle to obey the command. He hesitated, as if he wasn't quite sure he could see the protocol broken in this way, even by a general such as this man was.
But then he gave in.
"Yes, sir!" the major said, spun on his heels, clicked them together, and he and his two aides walked quickly away, though he didn't go very far and stopped, looking back. Down the hallway, lining both sides, were hundreds of Grey Wolves in dress uniform with their ceremonial swords and the latest rifles as well. They stood like statues in their ranks and did not move, as they were there to prevent any possible armed intrusion of diehard Leftist militias in the hallway while the general assembly of the outgoing parliament met in a secret, last session under heavy guard of Grey Wolves.
Homer saw his guardian-general open the door and after one step inside, suddenly there was no general! Homer stared at the spot where the general should have been--but there was nothing but empty space! Abandoned, just when he was most needed to guard him? Homer stood looking around wild-eyed for any sign of the White Angel--but there was no one like him. He hesitated in the doorway, wondering what had happened to send his guardian away and how was he to proceed. Who would help him now? All he had was a thought of God, the personal God that Faye had challenged him with back in Makon--would He come and help him now in this most dangerous situation he had ever been in? As the guards in the hall were all staring at him, he had to do something. The major and several other officers, after arguing with each other, were starting to move his way. Homer turned and opened the door. A grey-uniformed man sitting behind a big desk in the
room looked up to see who had dared disobey his orders for strict privacy to break in on him unannounced.
Homer still hesitated. What should he do? The Generalissimo, the commander-in-chief of the Grey Wolves, was rising from his chair. He was shouting something to him.
Not liking the idea he would most probably be arrested by the guards and shot on the spot as a Leftist insurgent, Homer shut the doors and faced the room's occupants.
He had no idea what to say for himself being there as he stared at the Grey
Wolf himself. All of a sudden he remembered: this was his father's murderer standing before him, as the White Angel had informed him. This man he was looking at murdered his father, and his wife and child--Homer's own half-brother!
He could not help himself. Anger swept away all fear and doubt. He advanced on the Grey Wolf with his fists clenched until they stood only a foot apart.
Showing no emotion as before, the Grey Wolf coldly eyed Homer. "I will have you arrested in a moment for criminal trespassing and spying, but who are you anyway? What are you doing, breaking in on us--me--this way?"
A woman now stepped into view, and Homer saw that she too was eyeing him between narrowed eyes with the same
rigid, cold, utterly alien stare as the Grey Wolf's. Yet, unlike the Grey Wolf, she was no stranger. He knew her--yes, it was the woman who ran his hotel's staff like a commanding general!
She leaned over to whisper something to the Grey Wolf. Then she threw back her head, scorn in every word, as if she did not know him. "Yes, what is HE doing here? Throw him out at once! This is a private conference! I won't be interrupted by your brother's little, mongrel pup!"
The Grey Wolf's lip curled slightly. His eyes shifted a fraction, as if to look her way, but he did not. He kept Homer's eye, and said slowly, "Let the young man speak for himself. He isn't exactly an alien to us, is he?" He turned, with a wave of his hand, indicating a chair. Homer did not want to sit in the presence of his father's murderer. He stood his ground, so the Grey Wolf dropped all formality. "Well?" he said. "What have you come to tell us before I have you taken away?" "Get out!" she said. "This is not your time to be interjecting your business in mine! I will not
be delayed a minute like this!"
She turned to the Grey Wolf. "I have one power crystal, and the second is missing. I
won't wait for it to be found by you! If you don't hand over all the power of state to me
right this instant, I will destroy you right where you sit!"
As he glared back at her, she held held out her hand on which a green jewel
shot forth raps that suddenly began to fan the room like a lighthouse's beacon, as if searching for something or someone.
The Grey Wolf shrank back as the green rays focused on him.
Elektra laughed. "Don't you dare threaten me, you wretched, little traitor! How dare you speak to me this way! I am far more than a mere princess of the realm! I won't argue with you, an inferior and a commoner--a slave! I am of the royal line and born in the purple! I will be queen, the supreme ruler, on the throne of this
country, though it is a mere human one at present--and you will do what I say and announce to the assembly that I, not you, rule, beginning this day!
The Grey Wolf and Elektra has forgotten Homer for the moment as they
dueled, and he was trying to think of ways to get out of the room before
they carried out any of their threats.
Rainey, however, was disturbed by Homer's fast beating heart, and was moving around.
Feeling the ferret about to pop out, Homer clapped his hand over him,
trying to keep the ferret from joining the fray.
The next events happened very quickly as Homer looked on helplessly. The Grey Wolf
reached in to a desk file drawer to remove a master control panel the deposed prime minister had just given up to him. Set with a number of switches, some of which could launch nuclear rockets, it also
held certain kinds of emergency buttons--in case the prime miniser were being personally assaulted
at any location he was at. His rival, however, darted over and slammed the drawer, catching his hand.
Zeto's fingers were crushed. As he withdrew his hand, his face was a white, pained mask, but he wasn't helpless, he reached with his good left hand for his
Magnin, which he kept in another drawer. Just as determined to gain the advantage at whatever cost, Elektra had anticipated this. She grabbed a royal green celadon pen set from the desk and slammed it against his chest. He fell back, and she took the opportunity to snatch the nuclear panel out of the desk.
But the Grey Wolf, opening his eyes at that moment, lunged forward at her with his one good hand, forcing her to drop the panel onto the desk.
Homer, not noticing that Rainy had leaped out of his coat pocket and landed in the open nuclear panel, tried to catch the Grey Wolf with a move straight from his dueling
days.
Homer and the Grey Wolf grappled a moment, then both went down, rolling over onto the ring even as Elektra tried to grab it. Its rays shot through the room, piercing every Atlantean in the room, energizing them with titanic power and aggressive envy and rivalry and suspicion. As Homer and the Grey Wolf fought,
Elektra still could not get the ring, which she thought contained the remaining power crystal not in her control.
Rainey, meanwhile, was not idle, even if he was immune to the world-dividing, war-generating Topaz. When awake, as if to make up doubly for his nocturnal, comatose state, he was transformed into a small tornado of energy and
activity. He did not know he was striding upon the power to destroy an entire world,
switches that controlled a Doomsday armada of nuclear rockets. All a born masticulator like him knew to do was chew on whatever interested him, and the glowing lights on the board
interested him. Always curious, he had to investigate them with his razor-sharp teeth. Fastening his teeth on a nice, juicy-looking red one, he pulled and bit, trying to pry it loose, while his feet depressed others of varying colors in a rapid sequence that was, seemingly, purely accidental.
Grey wolves burst into the office in response to a button Rainey inadvertently pushed with a back foot, and then, as Homer was pulled away from Generalissimo Zeki and Elektra was grabbed, Homer's guardian suddenly appeared in their midst. Seeing him, the Grey Wolves dropped hold of Homer and scrambled back away.
The White Angel was no longer in a Grey Wolf general's uniform. He had grown several sizes and was wearing a blinding-white robe, and carried a blue-blazing sword. As he waved it several times in the air, and everyone mortal and human shrank away from it--including Homer.
But the angel reached and caught Homer's arm and pulled him out with him he
left the room--but not before Rainey--whose attention span was limited when he wasn't tasting raw meat--had got tired of playing with the switches and rejoined
his master. The door slammed behind them, without anyone touching it, imprisoning them with the Topaz, which immediately set them all at each other's throats. The angel put the tip of his sword to the lock and it immediately fused into one red mass,
locking everyone in to their cage of fighting serpents.
Without explaining anything, the White Angel hustled Homer out of the building, chasing a huge mass of Grey Wolf troops and guards ahead of them with his sword's ferocious, blasting rays.
Outside, the general's car stood with the same driver as before--and the White Angel
opened the door for Homer so he could jump in first.
As they were rushed away down the main avenue leading toward the river bridge, the White Angel
spoke for the first time.
"Mighty O, I had to leave you when I did. I am not here to make such things happen--it was
your own choice that mattered. Now there is another choice which you must make. The world is now only minutes from all-out war. Rockets will soon be launched from their underground silos, and the
target nations will be responding with their own arsenals. We have only twenty minutes to set your friend free. Is that still your wish?"
At first the sound was like a low sullen thunder growling on the horizon, which Homer thought it was--but when one giant rocket after another shot overhead, ascending rapidly, he knew better.
All Homer could think of was getting home safely with Rainey--if there was a home to return to after the rockets reached Kingston and Alantah and Baton Roo--but even above that there was
one thing he must do first--somehow find Talulah and set her free. He couldn't leave
her, a fellow Confederate, in the clutches of the barbarians, the Grey Molves. No matter how cruel she was herself, he couldn't wish such a fate on her.
The White Angel, again, seemed to know what Homer had just decided. "Very well," he
aaid, and then gazed silently ahead. After a few minutes they were
rapidly approaching the main gate of the base.
Homer's eyes showed alarm as he looked at the White Angel, who then continued to explain. "This base and the city and most of the country will be bombed and made a wasteland in twenty minutes as their enemies retaliate with their rockets."
What could Homer say or do about this? Events were going so fast, he had no time to
think of a way out.
They flew toward the dirigible hanger and then came to a halt, skidding on the
tarmac. Smoke from the tires was still billowing up around them, as the White Angel
threw open the door and leaped out, taking Homer and Rainy in on hand and his sword in the other. They went directly to the Grey Wolf's old HQ that was located inside the hangar.
The guards saw them coming, and rushed out to stop them. But the White Angel released his hold on Homer and swept forward at them. They immediately dropped their rifles and scattered before the terrifying sight.
Beckoned to follow, the White Angel entered the building, bursting open one door after another and sending the Wolves inside running for their lives. Several times rays from the sword knifed completely through the building and windows were blown out as
the White Angel swept aside every obstacle.
Homer ran into the building, but had to climb over the shattered remains of
double maximum security doors to get to where the torture chamber was.
When he climbed over twisted pieces of a double door into the room, he found no one there but a very beaten-up
young woman staring at him through puffy, black-rimmed eyes.
"I must be out of my mind," she said, more to herself than to Homer. "I must have lost my mind!" Then she seemed to see him more clearly. "Hey, what are you doing here? What happened to the creeps holding me here? They just all ran off. And somebody
told me that I am free! Free! And said that there would be someone to pick me up, who is from my own country. Are you it? I've gotta get out of this place!"
She was now crying. "Please, if you're the one, take me outta here!"
Homer was listening to her while trying to see where the White Angel had gone. What had happened to him? Was he abandoning him once again?
Homer glanced back at Talulah, who was holding a blanket around herself after rising from a stool and nearly toppling over in front of him when her clubbed knees gave way. Except for her voice, he wouldn't have been able to recognize her--she was so covered with bruises. "Yes, I will be taking you out. We'd better go. They are not going to
let us leave--if we don't make it out while they are still running for their lives!"
He took her hand and drew her as gently as he could from the room, and it took some minutes as she was hurt so much in her arms and legs, but they
made it outside. From there it was a long walk to the general's car--but Homer
saw only where it had been standing. Now he was truly at a loss. How were they to
get out? Talulah could scarcely walk--and he would have to carry her if they had to move quickly.
He could already hear shouts and the sounds of running soldiers, dozens of them,
and then he saw men enter the hanger at both ends, all carrying rifles.
There was no where else to go. He then heard a tremendous, hollow booming sound go from one end to the other of the hangar, and Homer gazed up and became aware that
that the immense airship above them was coming down! The men running in to capture
Homer and Talulah stopped and stood gazing up.
Somehow the dirigible had lowered itself in the hangar, but Homer and Talulah still had just enough room under it to walk out. He saw the side of the Control Car ahead of them--it was now low enough to reach from the ground! He reached the door of the
control car, and helped Talulah in, and he jumped in and slammed and locked the
door just as the Grey Wolves rushed up. As they beat on the sides with their rifle butts, Homer fully expected the glass to be smashed in, but it wasn't glass--it was inch-thick plexiglass, so thick they couldn't dent it. Some of them began to raise their rifles, as if they would shoot the windows out. This was serious, Homer saw, and he and Talulah
got down on the floor, fully expecting the windows to be shot out in the next few moments.
Rainey, being squished in the pocket, scrambled out and climbed up on the window, then jumped to the front of the Control Car.
They heard, not shots, but a whoosh, as of a huge draft of jetting air, followed by a strange silence. Gradually, Homer realized that something had happened to all the Wolves attacking them. Homer rose up carefully and peered out the bottom of the window. There was no sign of the Grey Wolves, only a white blanket of what looked like an inch of two of snowflakes lying over dozens of still forms, some of them with rigid hands and arms stuck in grotesque movements that looked like they had been frozen stiff while trying to fend off something rolling over them.
And then, as he tried to stand up, he almost fell, for the Control Car lurched forward, for the dirigible was moving!
Aghast, he stared up, but from the vantage of the control car, which as a tiny speck compared to the rigid container of gas that lifted it, he couldn't see anything but just a small section of the airship's gigantic underbelly. That told him nothing. But he could see ahead and out the side windows as well that the hangar's giant doors had rolled back slowly on the track to either side, while the dirigible was
being towed outdoors into the open.
What was that flying and pulling at the end of the tow line--the White Angel?
The airship had been commissioned in years past by the Multan government for coastal
surveillance and interception of incoming enemy prop-driven planes, then decommissioned when the nuclear rockets came on line. Its lockers still held the effects of the last crew, sent hastily to new stations or given early retirements. Rummaging around,
Talulah found a lady officer's locker and just what she needed--though the white uniform was a better fit for an ironing board than her own hourglass figure.
She knew it was all leading up to a public exposure before the cameras, so that the Grey Wolves, once in power, could humiliate the CSA, while accusing the CSA of sending
a secret agent in the guise of a beauty queen. After the "confession," they would
execute her, of course, and all relations would be broken off between Heruka-Ratna and the CSA. This was to be the Grey Wolf's first move against the CSA in his agenda to
take leadership over the world away from its more powerful, economically and militarily advanced neighbor that had held suzerainty far too long in the Grey Wolf's estimation.
Now all those plans had gone up in smoke, fire, and towering clouds of radioactivity--in a mere twenty or so minutes as the opposing war machines of the two nations
fired upon each other, one in attack, the other in retaliation.
Towed by the White Angel, the airship cleared the last stretch of the Strait and
reached the coasts of Georgia. They could not see the clouds rising over the CSA
capital, Kingston, to the south, but ahead of the ship Homer saw
clouds just as ominous and sinister spreading from one end of the horizon to the other.
It was absolutely silent in the Control Car, though Homer could hear Talulah moving about, as she finished dressing and then tried to fix some of the ravages of
hr confinement and torture with the lady officer's makeup kit. She was so intent on this, she had not shut the door of the tiny restroom, so she could hear Homer's gasping all the way from the front of the car as he viewed what was happening at that minute to the CSA's greatest, most populated province after Jamaica.
When she had covered up the bruises with powder (using a footpower when the
face powder ran out), she combed her hair and applied an old stick of half-dried lipstick to her swollen lips, then decided after looking at herself in the mirror that it was the best she could do in her circumstances--the nightmare in the mirror wasn't going to go away soon, she might as well spit in the cameras ands face the world again as Talulah Coldbank, Miss CSA-Teen World!
She looked down at her hands. And thank God they hadn't pulled out her nails, as they threatened to do many times! What would she have done then, with no ability to claw any rivals if they got too close to the title?
Her dreams of revived glory (just as the dreams of the Grey Wolf had dreamed of revived imperial Multanese glory) crumbled instantly, however, the moment she began moving toward the front of the Car and caught her first glimpses of the horror that was
engulfing the world below.
Day had turned to night, with dust blocking the sun's rays. One one side it was still day, but the CSA was engulfed in pitch darkness in which the stars glimmered faintly as if they were guttering out.
The bluish-ringed angel pulling the tow rope meant nothing to Talulah at that moment--she could only see
what was happening to Alantah and Baton Roo and other cities--they were nothing but
ugly smears of fire and roiling smoke and ash clouds. Even as she came up to Homer, where he stood unable to even draw a breath, she saw two more H-bomb mushroom clouds erupt where cities stood, their sites joining the other zeros, in a landscape of nothing but spreading, enormous, polluted negations where once life had thrived.
Now the dim prospect had come out of the closet and turned out to be a raging
dragon laying waste one city after another, destroying the whole country systematically.
They could see no city of any considerable size had been spared. Georgia was wiped out! The CSA was not just crippled, it was leveled, laid completely waste--a radioactive one too!
After the initial shock wore off, the two Confederates felt a kind of East Georgian or Ismanic kismet, fatalism, a resignation to death and destruction and "the will of God." It was all over for them--their homes, their families, their way of life--all swept away before their eyes! They were utterly alone--marooned, made orphans while drifting in the sky in the airship. What would they do? They were gazing down at hell itself--or so it seemed. If they descended, they would be
cremated by the death rays of the radioactive ruins! It was impossible to survive down there, they could see. What human being, what animal, could endure those criss crossing death rays and the debris of the bomb clouds now falling like gray sludge in the rain over the whole landscape.
Homer wasn't looking at the white-faced Talulah, who had turned bisque, china doll white under her
thick mask of powder, so much at the desolation where all his dreams had crumbled together with Talulah's and the Grey Wolf's.
Homer's heart stabbed him. What had happened to his family, such as it was--Higgins, his Grandmother Bean, and Faye? What had happened to Makon? Where they all gone--mere little piles of ash?
Were they still alive, but covered with radioactivity, which would take the skin off their bodies in a few hours, and they would bleed to death in terrible agony, for no doctor could help themn in such a state--and all the hospitals of note had been destroyed in Atlanta and other cities.
Rainey too must have sensed the end of the world it had known and now seemed a bit under the weather, as he moped about the Control Car,
no longer interested in running up and down the front windows.
Homer's eyes then caught sight of the White Angel, who faithfully pulled them onward, as if to their death--for what could there be except death ahead?
Didn't he know there was no point in taking them home? Homer wondered. What could
be the purpose now in returning to Makon? It was gone, wasn't it? He had to find out, of course, and see if anyone had survived--but he had no hope he would
find anyone alive--not in the inferno he and Talulah could see below him.
Talulah finally had enough of looking at the end of her world, and she turned
around and went and sat on one of the cushion-less metal chairs whose legs were screwed to the floor, saying nothing, but
evidently thinking about her prospects.
Homer too had no taste for words at the moment. He glanced at Rainey, then
at Talulah, then back to the White Angel. How could he still be taking them
home, he continued wondering, when there was no home? Homer was homeless! Didn't the White Angel know that? How could he be so stupid?
Homer felt anger for the first time rise in him. Faye's good God came to mind. The God of Isma could destroy a world, wicked as this one had been (that it could not be denied by anyone who was honest!), and that was his right and even his obligation. The mullahs and imans had warned them for years that their God would destroy them if they kept back their tithes to the church and also for drinking forbidden spirits and avoiding the church fasts and festivals, not to mention praying five times a day and making holy pilgrimage once a lifetime to Multan. He had made the pilgrimage, but what good had it brought him? This! His religion, Isma, explained what he was viewing, for it was Divine Justice taking full revenge on them for their sins against
the laws of their religion--so there was no excuse, nor any sympathy and mercy to be expected from God. The God of Isma, everyone knew, had no personal attachment to his creation, unlike Faye's God. The God of Isma would no doubt start completely over, and find a people, or create a new race not at all human, one which would be more obedient and good than they had been. Perhaps they would be giant-sized ants--for ants were known to be obedient, blindly and
unquestioningly following the laws of their colonies? Surely, they would be more useful and pleasing to the God of Isma than human beings, so selfish, independent-minded, had ever been! Or He might choose not to create anything--and remain alone forever--as He was all-sufficient, needing nothing, preferring vast, unending solitude to the noisy, troubled affairs of earth's vexing, impudent, selfish little creatures.
But Faye's merciful, kind, forgiving God? Where was he now? Isma's God seemingly had swung his sword and reaped the nations--drenching his sword in the blood of countless millions, while casting fire to burn up even their corpses!
Isma's God was laughing in derision at their utter destruction!
But Faye's God? How could such a God exist, when all Homer could see was death and pitiless judgment?
Homer could not weep, as he felt judged, condemned, and now punished for his own
laxness and rebellion against the laws of his religion. He must accept it completely, his whole training in religion commanded him. Yet something deep within--a thirst or belief in freedom that was attached to his human spirit and hadn't yet been
extinguished by all the years under Isma--now trembled and flickered, about to go out, but it did not go out. Something was fanning it back to life, though all the world had turned to ashes. What was it? He couldn't accept Faye's God--for Isma's God
had every right to destroy his world if it rebelled against Him as this one had--precisely because Faye's God had, she told him, sent a Substitute for sin, to take the full penalty upon himself, so that they might go free and not be destroyed. Was that a lie? They had been destroyed, so evidently her "Messiah Yeshua" had not been able to stop the world from destroying itself. He was disproven, shown to be a mere figment of the imagination of ignorant forest Indian people!
There was no such delivering, saving, forgiving Messiah Yeshua!
How he would tell her that if they should meet again! he determined. He was so angry, not at Isma and its God, but at Faye's God, for some hidden part deep in him was bitterly disappointed. He realized now that she had stuck a hook into him somehow with her words, causing him to doubt Isma and entertain the notion of there existing such a God and such a Messiah Yeshua as she believed in and loved in her heart.
How he wanted, more than anything, to see her again, so he throw this all up in her face, confronting her with the falseness of her views! Though once tongue-tied as she described her God's superiority over his God, he had more than enough firepower to destroy her faith. Now he was fully equipped and sure of himself. He could
denounce her God and her Messiah, and tell her to her face how stupid and
ignorant they all were!
No thinking person could possibly believe in her God after a nuclear war! How dare she, a mere savage Indian, question his great God, the Compassionate Slayer of all infidels, the Fountain of Truth that held not a drop of mercy for the contaminating pigs and apes of Faye's ancient religion! His God had swung his sword of divine vengeance, and
reaped with it as with a great Scythe the wicked nations of earth! What had Faye's God done? He was obviously impotent--without any power to intervene, without any power to save anybody! Faye's God was dust, and less than dust! A puff of wind would blow him away!
Despite these thoughts, which exonerated his own religion completely in his own eyes, Homer
still felt a strange disappointment. Was he really without any hope whatsoever? The White Angel, despite the hopelessness of his task, continued drawing them futher inland, and this spectacle now drew Talulah's stare. She couldn't believe her puffy, black-ringed eyes, for she was really seeing him for the first time.
"Hell's bells!" she sputtered, turning to Homer. "What is that thing out there pulling that rope?"
It was then she must have recognized the fact there were no controls--they, and the four prop engines that drove the airship at a top speed of 80 mph--had been removed when the
dirigible was decommissioned.
How could Homer explain the White Angel? Homer felt a tugging at his sleeve, and he looked down, and it was the ferret, climbing and snuggling into his clothing as if seeking a safer place than the broad-windowed Control Car.
With one hand stroking the somewhat terrified ferret that had climbed into his coat pocket, Homer shook his head--he had no explanation for what was going on. How could he explain the White Angel and his role impersonating a Grey Wolf general to such a female as Talulah? She wouldn't believe a word!
Homer let Talulah sputter on for a while, then he went to sit down and think, and she saw he wasn't speaking, and left him alone to his thoughts and went to the back to see what else she might find, maybe a pack of playing cards would turn up and a pack of cigarettes
Booze, of course, and lots of it, was what she wanted most of all--but she had no hope for that aboard
a teetotling military airship this old--but then she thought of something. Hurrying to the medicine cabinet, she pulled it open and screamed. Medicinal whiskey--a whole bottle with a mullah's medical-use-only-seal still intact! Cradling it like the most precious jewel, she went and found herself a spot she made comfortable with
uniforms, broke the seal and sat down and was soon in another country entirely--while Homer
struggled on alone with his troubled thoughts in a darkened world where the world-destroying Topaz and Emerald had unleashed their full powers and malevolence upon humanity.
His father--whom he had met unawares--was dead--slain by his own brother. Then he had met his uncle, who had just murdered his father! He had had no time to think about it until now, and it was unbearable to consider. What could he do now--he had
lost his father and the last chance to ask him some questions, among them, why had he abandoned him and gone to Multan?
Homer did not know whether he was angry at his father--or more angry at his uncle--for
both seemed at fault. Confused, Homer tried to make sense of his thoughts and feelings, but he could not. Hate and revenge and feelings of rejection all churned together in a stew, and could not be separated.
After several hours of the White Angel's towing, they were reaching higher northern country, passing over the last of the nuclear-blasted cities. As they cleared some high hills, passed over wooded parkland, and entered a state forest Homer felt a lurch, as the Control Car dipped. His stomach took a dive too at the same time. He hadn't eaten for hours--when was his last meal? He had no idea. He glanced toward Talulah, but she was oblivious to the world, and he saw the reason, the bottle in her hand, which had spilled half its contents on her uniform in front.
Sickened, he went and carefully took it out of her hand, and her eyes barely opened, then shut. She was sleeping through the death of the world! he thought. He glanced down at the bottle. There was still some in the bottom. He could use some
amnesia, he thought. He was about to lift it up and drain it, but then his eye caught a movement in the corner of his eye. A snag of a tall tree, rising up out of the mist, was about to puncture and impale them, ripping them from bow to stern!
Recovered from his shock, Homer dashed over to the nearest windows to see what the White Angel was doing--dragging them down to a crash landing evidently in the worst possible places--what looked to him like the middle of nowhere!
Book II is in progress
NOTE OF FRIENDLY REMINDER TO DOWNLOADERS: THIS CONTENTS PAGE DOES NOT LIST A GREAT MANY COMPLETED CHRONICLES, SO THERE IS NO WAY DOWNLOADING CAN OBTAIN THE COMPLETE RETRO STAR SERIES. WHAT IS GIVEN TO PUBLIC DOMAIN HERE IS JUST ENOUGH TO OPEN A WINDOW ON THE SERIES AND ITS POSSIBILITIES TO WHOMEVER IS SERIOUSLY INTERESTED.
Obsession (or hysteria) is not science, but you could not tell the self-appointed weather pundits of Earth II that Global Warming was going to produce a new Ice Age--not until, year after year, it became
apparent to all that the winters wouldn't be getting shorter and warmer any time soon. In fact, the summers were getting shorter and colder, forcing agriculture indoors, along with most of Earth's population. Geodomed cities, like London, became the rule, forced upon everybody by sheer necessity. Glaciers now stalked every continent, engulfing vast tracks of
formerly productive land.
Centuries after Jason's return and rule over his city and kingdom,
the games of Greece were celebrated, at famous sites such as Delos, Delphi, Thebes, Corinth, and Olympos. The winners were treated, for a day or so, as gods of Olympos the sacred mountain of the Greek gods where they were thought to reside at the court of Zeus, the chief god.
The champion's heart suddenly sank. The sky seemed to darken as the meaning struck him like a thunderbolt. "What do you mean, Old One? Remember age? Explain yourself!" he stammered.
FOR THE CHRONICLE OF THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE, PARTS I-VIII, AND CONCLUSION, GO TO VOLUME IV AND THE JASON AND THE GOLDEN FLEECE CHRONICLE, ANTE ANNO STELLAE 1230-1200.
After Jason returned to rule over his kingdom, all was well in heaven and earth? Well, not quite yet. When Elektra heard what had happened in Colchis, that her amusing little pet dragon (which she had planned to use on hostages for entertaining her at royal functions) had been slain by none other than Jason, and the slayer gotten clean away too, she was determined that heads would roll. And heads did roll, literally, around her. Then she set out personally, in
pursuit of Jason. He must be stopped, she thought, from spoiling all her plans for
Ilios and its goddess-worship. Achaea, with the likes of Jason to make it succeed, was to be smashed, and Ilios was to rule supreme, under her scepter, of course!
CHRONICLE OF THE ROYAL CAPE, VOL. IV, RETROSTAR:
Jason grew red in the face before he could think what to answer. He was
caught on the needle of her sharp tongue, and could not get off. This was most dangerous for her too, she knew. He could instantly turn and hate her passionately for having unhorsed him, or something else might transpire in his heart that she
had only dreamt of.
Medea retained the mate to it, which was too large for her tiny ears, but she said she would wear hers on her robe instead, nearest her heart.
The return trip was lengthly, almost as long as the journey to Colchis, despite the understandable impatience of the men to regain their homes and families. Each port of call made it impossible to depart immediately, however, as the news of their glorious exploit and its success had preceded them, and crowds of thousands greeted them with great love and joy wherever they docked. Ships and boats of every kind also accompanied them along the way home, so there was no getting away from the tremendous attention. It seemed the whole world was celebrating the
winning of the Golden Fleece by Jason and the Argonauts!
Not long after the return of the Argo to Iolkos, where it was moored and soon became a site for pilgrimage from all other Achaea, Jason recalled what Argus had told him about a harp-shaped tree he had found above the city. Jason sent men up to find it, and they came back telling him its size and other particulars. He soon sent
up artisans, and they cleared away the excess branches and then fitted the still living harp with strings.
When the wind blew down from the heights above, the harp sprang to life and played
melodies only the wind could invent down to the people of Iolkos and even the surrounding villages and hamlets and farms. It could be heard for many miles out to sea as well. The name of the harp was not Orphic, as you might expect it to be, for
Orpheus called it the Harp of Mopsos, in honor of the serpent-slain hero.
Who is going to rule Atlantis II, and from there, the world? Who is going to sit on the saddle of world power, centered in Heruka-Ratna? Three Atlanteans vying for a comeback converge with a unique half-Atlantean, half-human by the name of Homer Bean, which with his pet ferret will prove more than a match. Unfortunately, Homer is proves to be the match that ignites the fuse to a world set to explode.
In Part II, the cause of the world's coming cataclysm by nuclear melt-down, is the this little pinkie ring's gemstone, a particularly evil and powerful topaz, seen
last on the pinkie of a poisoned Publicatexan seated by Homer at a luncheonette in Port Andros. Recognizing it as Talulah's, Homer grabs it off the dying man and runs, thus serving as its courier to deliver it to the very centers of power that are now locked in a struggle for world domination. Atlanteans, humans, even a Georgian ferret, are unwitting participants and allies in the Gotterdamerung of Atlantis II.
In the upcoming Park III of Chronicle Sixty, Talulah lands in more trouble than even she can handle. Her comeuppance is as cruel as the way she had treated others in order to win a beauty pageant crown.
FOR MORE OF PART II, CHRONICLE SIXTY, TALULAH'S STAR, TELLING HOW HOMER'S QUEST FOR IDENTITY WAS FATALLY CONNECTED WITH A TEEN BEAUTY QUEEN'S POWERFUL JEWEL OF EVIL THAT IN COMBINATION WITH A SECOND ALIEN ENTITY BROUGHT THE CONFRONTATION OF ATLANTEANS AND HUMANS THAT PRECIPITATED A FULL-BLOWN NUCLEAR WORLD WAR. GO TO CHRONICLE SIXTY IN THE DIRECTORY. THIS CHRONICLE IS IN PROGRESS, WITH PART III NOW APPEARING ON THIS PAGE.
"PART II, "TALULAH'S STAR, VOL. III, CHRONICLE SIXTY, RETROSTAR
CHRONICLE SIXTY, VOL. III, PART III, THE GREY WOLF:
When do you know the Shadow Line, dividing your former life and the advent of sheer nightmare, has passed over you? Homer had already experienced some terrible things and even his near death several times in the last day or so--but he was now to find out that all that had been mere preparation. Yet it wasn't preparation enough, he would soon find as he made his way slowly into the darkened, silent Cayman mansion.
He did not realize it at the time, but he was in deepening shock before it mentally registered just what he was seeing. He leaned over and picked up something, a woman's shoe! Or was it a child's? It was so small and dainty.
He was staring at it dumbly when he noticed it was half full of the same liquid that
lay in a big puddle on the floor. He set the shoe back carefully, and didn't notice that his fingers were now bloody.
He took the staircase, an ancient, creaking flight of mulberry-wood steps. It led to a number of small rooms, narrow halls, all elaborate and decorated in a centuries-old style. Some had chandeliers and were filled with books and art objects. Others looked as if they had never been opened--not for years--
for cobwebs were thick on everything in the rooms.
The shoe with blood in it, the puddle of blood on the floor, now this dead, suffocated baby boy. Homer, staring at it, slowly backed away. He was still backing away when he
ran into the open door, which moved and almost closed, shutting him in, but he
turned suddenly by instinct and flung out of the room. He rushed toward the stairs,
and was down to the ground floor without using most of the steps. He almost slipped right into the blood, but jumped and missed it.
Homer did not think from that point until he was standing in the street. He had burst running from the front door to where he now found himself in a street of the Old City. His running had disturbed his companion, for Rainy had climbed out and was
clinging to his shoulder. Looking wildly around, Homer wondered what the best way would be leading to the airport. All he wanted was to take the next flight out of this
nightmare world he had stumbled into. As for finding Talulah and returning her valuable topaz ring, he had forgotten all about it.
As Homer looked around and wondered which way to proceed, home in stuffy, little Makon never seemed a more welcome thought. Nagging, old Higgins, his ailing, secretive grandmother, the
challenging questions of Faye about his religion--he couldn't think of anything he wanted more at the moment than his former life, lost as he was in a city that was literally tearing itself apart.
It is a strange thing how absolutely life can change, and quickly, all because a seemingly insignificant thing is done or said which turns out to be the catalyst of a something far greater, or, more closer to the reality, the spider that pulls in a struggling fly caught in its web.
The massacres that had begun hours earlier had not stopped, they were just spreading as the demonstrators broke and ran into other parts of the city, with the Grey Wolves in hot pursuit.
Homer came to the body--and he saw he was looking at a dead man--lying where he had fallen on some rocks, fallen head first. His neck had to be broken, at the very least, Homer realized. Then the idea struck him, what he had to do. The man's uniform--it was his ticket to the airport. He had to remove it, and change clothes immediately, or risk being treated as a Leftist demonstrator!
The uniform fit! Yet there was something else he had to solve quickly. He had a problem. What was he to do with Rainey? He knew he couldn't leave his furry friend to his fate in a strange place--he had to take him back home with him.
The moment he was scrambling to find a place to squeeze into on the jammed troop transport, the tailgate was slammed up into place by the sergeant who had just returned and found Homer out of reach of his club. He yelled curses at Homer as the truck
roared away down the street, throwing them all against each other and then up and down on the bare floorboards the rest of the way.
Homer knew that for a little while the trip lasted he wouldn't be closely
inspected and found out--the Grey Wolves around him were too exhausted and covered with
blood to care about anything else and paid him no attention as the truck, its klaxon horn blaring to clear its path, careened full speed through the crowded streets on its way through the city. Then, after crossing a bridge, it was across suburbs of the city and out into the countryside, taking gravelled roads full of potholes.
The transport's tailgate was thrown down. The whole group bolted out the back, glad to
end the torture of the ride and put feet back on the solid earth. As they milled about, Homer kept his head down and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible.
Homer, his fears rising as he realized he might soon be spotted as
an alien--particularly when he was forced to say anything--which would
get him shot--was standing there only a few moments with the other Grey Wolves
when a limoisine pulled up.
A major opened the door and a general stepped out.
He said something to the major, who stepped back and followed as the general
strode forward. The whole platoon snapped to attention, and Homer did the same,
imitating them as best he could, his eyes cracked to see the others in order to
do the same as they did.
The four-starred Grey Wolf general poked Homer's chest with his gloved finger, then
swung round and returned to his car. The major, giving Homer a push when he
just stood there gaping at the general, said something which Homer couldn't understand, except that he realized he was meant to follow the general into his
vehicle.
Homer was beside himself. He felt close to panic. He had to try to handle this situation, one last time. "I won't do anything you or anybody tells me to do. Let me out of this car, or l'll jump out!"
"White Angel" or not, the general was escorted from his car, with his aide Homer by his side, straight past the saluting guard posts and into the Capitol's parliamentary palace.
As Homer stepped in, his ear caught sound of a woman's voice which was familiar to him. She was standing by the window, her back turned away as she looked out at the city and also the government square where the Grey Wolf's tanks and mobile artillery units were drawn up in a line facing the parliament building.
Though he couldn't see her face, she seemed very angry, but broke off speaking at a sign from the Grey Wolf.
Homer had no idea how much that truth would affect him, as it now rushed into his mind with violent force. The ring's topaz in his coat pocket now leaped to life, flooding him with its rays. He felt like he could leap and assault the man on the spot, he was so overcome by his horror and anger and a burning desire in his heart to eliminate all rivals.
Before Homer could even think of a response, the woman who was now pacing back and forth like a caged tigress, flew and shook her fist at Homer.
"Princess Elektra! Stop it!" the Grey Wolf gasped. "I don't find your histrionics
amusing in the least. Just try anything, my
men have orders to shoot anyone here who does me the slightest harm, so you will
never leave here alive!"
The topaz ring had also shot out with Rainey, and it rolled across the carpet,
right between all three as they converged on each other.
No one
dared to challenge them, and those who didn't run for their lives just stood gazing at them stupified and uncomprehending.
The Cold War with its arms race and was over! Heruka-Ratna, ready or not for all-out war, had launched a pre-emptive strike! Who had done it? The Grey Wolf? The bossy lady manager from the hotel?
Instead of slowing down, the
car barrelled down the last stretch, and Homer saw the speedometer jump from 85 to 100.
Guards, put on red alert by the launchings, stepped out to stop them with their rifles if necessary, but the limoisine, still flying
the general's insignia and Grey Wolf flags, did not stop and plowed through the
wooden barriers set in the roadway, scattering them like kindling as the guards leaped
into the gutter.
"There is no time to deal with them, and they only have a few more minutes to live." the White Angel said simply.
While the ship passed over the Strait of Floyda where in past eras
a fabled land called "Florida," or Land of Flowers, had once stood above the waters--its palm-tree lined cities, resorts, and playgrounds doomed and inundated by the sea for its extravagance and oppression of the poor by the richer inhabitants--Talulah was busy going through lockers at the rear of the car.
At last she could drop the ugly blanket, which reminded her of the torture chamber of the Grey Wolves! She opened a window right then and there and threw it out, spitting and swearing as she did so!
Now that she had some decent clothes, her old Confederate rebel fighting spirit was returning, even though she was still in poor shape from all the beatings and the other
brutal things they had done to her to break her spirit and make her sign
a "confession".
Both Homer and Talulah were gasping with shock and horror and disbelief, protesting the end of their world, useless as that was. The evidence was undeniable, but they could not accept it. All their lives they had lived under the threat of a nuclear exchange, but it had grown so familiar that their schools' routine of occasional, half-hearted drills when they were all required to crawl under their desks for five minutes had only served to make the possibility seem all the more remote. It might happen, but everything went on as before, despite one revolution after another in the CSA and Heruka-Ratna, and even if the tension racheted up with the installation of yet more
lethal H-Bomb-tipped rockets, people soon adjusted, and life went on the same way as in the past.
Before their eyes they could see a once lush green land turn grey, funereal ash-grey, only the shroud of the world's coffin was glowing a sinister green and purple in places, where it was not still glowing yellow at the heart of each nuclear epicenter.
It was just as well there were no controls in the airship, Homer was not in a frame of mind to fly it anyway, even if he had known how. He had so much to think about, his head felt like bursting!
But they cleared it somehow by a few feet and passed over more snags of trees that all looked like a hurricane had blown over what had been a thick pine forest.
"Yom Kippur," Book II of "Beyond the Rapture," Vol. V, is in progress. Go to the link provided for Horace Brave Scout's account of how the Turnbull family
met the challenges of the coming battles of the Anti-Christ for supremacy over the Earth's last rivals to his power, followed by the Reign of Yeshua that would last 1,000 years.
Chapter 2, Book Two, Volume V, Beyond the Rapture
Retro Star and Twin Worlds Timelines
Brief Account of the Twin Earths
The Black Crystal and the White Stone
Bridges of Destiny
The Algol Invasion & Client Species
Universe Terminator: The Sardius, Carnelian, Red Star, Stone of Fire, Fiery Stone, the First Alien Entity, OP, Wormwood, Wormstar, Retrostar
Map of Holland America
Extraterrestrials and Terrestrials
The Topaz
Star Map of the Re-Located Earth, Twin Earth Atlas, Stellar and Terrestrial
Argo, Ships of the Line
Volume IV, Appendix, Part I
Volume IV, Appendix, Part II
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