Valencia quickly covered the view of the Wolv.  She popped open the full door, but Miss Watson would not stop screaming until her young man came running to hold her.

            “It was terrible, dead and staring.  Cold eyes full of evil.  It was evil.”  Miss Watson tried to explain between sobs of fear.  Valencia escorted the couple out the door, shut down the internal systems and sealed the door behind them.

            “Paper.”  Valencia tried to change the subject. 

            “Up here.”  The young man said and he escorted her to the main tent, but slowly because Miss Watson did not want to be let go.  She settled a little by the time they arrived and contented herself to sit in a chair while Valencia wrote out the phone number.

            “I’ll never be able to sleep.”  Miss Watson said.

            “So come back here tonight and keep me company,” the young man suggested.  “I have no intention of sleeping until these people come and take that thing away, whoever they are.”  It was an awkward but a sincere invitation.

            “I could come back,” Miss Watson said.  She looked at her man with hope.  “Oh, but I would be so close to that thing.”  She pointed.

            “Don’t worry.  The boy said two thousand years old.  I am sure after two thousand years it is dead.”

            “But—“

            “Besides.  I’ll stay with you.  Nothing will get you in the night.”

            “You better stay close.”

            “I will.  I promise.”

            “Ahem!”  Valencia had to cough to get their attention.  “Now no talking about this to anyone except these people.  You can talk to these people, but that’s it.  Especially don’t talk about it to Glen.”  She pointed at Miss Watson.  “Now we have to get going to get back to the city anywhere near the right time.”  She handed the phone number to the young man and went away.  Glen came back and immediately took Miss Watson by the hand.  He dragged her at first, but eventually she understood and let go of him.  The rest of the students were already loaded up in the bus, waiting.

            Glen took the seat right behind the driver and sat by the window.  Something was troubling him but he couldn’t name it.  By the time he got back to New York, he had forgotten most of what happened, but something held on and would not quite let go.  He took the A-train back down the West Side, took the Path and train home, but he was still concerned about something.  He went to bed that night with a worried look on his face.  It was not until one in the morning that the pieces came together. 

            “They might sleep for a hundred years or even a thousand years if not picked up.”  He said it himself.  “Or two thousand years.”  He said it out loud and added, “Damn!”  He got up and dressed as quietly as he could so as not to wake the family.  He went downstairs and jumped into the little Triumph convertible.  The top was already down.  The thing could not do better than fifty with a tailwind, but it was the only car he was allowed to drive.  He backed out of the driveway in the dark and turned on his headlights when he reached the street.  He hoped he could remember how to get there, and he said, “Damn, damn,” the whole way.

            Glen pulled up to the dig with his lights off.  What was he doing?  That was when he decided he was insane.  Still, he had come that far.  He had to see.  He turned the car, backed in for a quick getaway and crawled slowly into the dark, going from one bush to another as if the Wolv might not see him.  He knew the Wolv could not only see perfectly in the dark, it could hear him a mile away and smell him at an even greater distance, but being sneaky made him feel better.

            Glen found an arm near the main tent and he almost turned back.  Then he thought about throwing up but swallowed it back down.  There were pieces of people scattered everywhere around the digs.  He almost turned back again, but at last he went up into the tent and he found a survivor.  It was Miss Watson.  Her eyes were wide with madness and her fist was shoved deep into her mouth to prevent herself from screaming.

            “Come on,” Glen whispered.  The woman’s eyes did not move.  “Miss Watson.  It’s Glen.  Come on, we have to go.”  At the mention of his name, Miss Watson looked up but there was no sign in her eyes that she recognized him.  “We have to go.”  Glen spoke with more volume and like he had done the previous afternoon, he grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the tent.

            “No.”  She protested, feebly.  “If we move it may see us.”  But soon, like on the previous afternoon, she came to understand where they were headed and stopped resisting.  Glen could pick up the pace then and the woman had no trouble keeping up.

            Glen jumped into the driver’s seat as soon as they reached the car.  Miss Watson crawled up the trunk and fell into the back seat.  Glen started the engine but over top of the whine of that little four cylinder, they heard the howl.  It was close, and Glen left in as much of a cloud of dust and gravel that little Triumph could produce without stalling. 

            “I see it!”  Miss Watson screamed.  Glen checked his rearview mirror an saw it as well.  It looked to be about the size of the car and it was running on all fours and gaining.  After a short way, though, they got to some pavement and Glen revved it up from thirty-five to as near fifty as he felt was safe.  The Wolv could go across country, but Glen knew that on foot even the Wolv could not catch them at that speed.  Unfortunately, he also knew the Wolv could track them no matter how fast they went, and it would not give up no matter how long it took.

            “What is that thing?”  Miss Watson asked suddenly.  Glen glanced at her as she crawled over the seat and into the front bucket.  He imagined she must have blotted out the trauma of the dig for the moment.

            “Wolv.”  He answered as well as he could and concentrate on the road.

            “Wolf.  I can see that.”

            “No, Wolv.”  Glen shook off the correction and decided to go in a different direction.  “An alien.  Not smart.  Not sophisticated in engineering.  Probably could not fix the escape pod, but not stupid.  Clever and cunning.  The Humanoid Empire used them as front line troops in battle, and they rarely had to send in the second line.  They are warriors, hunters and absolute killers—predators.”

            “Wolv.”  Miss Watson tried to word.

            “So how did you, you know, survive?”  He asked and the woman looked at him at first as if she did not understand what he was asking, but then she did and she looked away.

            “I was in the outhouse.  I heard the screams.  I did not dare come out.”

            “All that shit probably disguised your scent.”

            “I heard it sniffing around the outside and I almost screamed myself.  But then it went away.  I waited a full hour.  When I came out, I saw…”  The woman began to cry and Glen hardly knew what to say.

            “We’ll get through this,” he said at last.  “We will survive this.”

            It was a few minutes before the lights came on in the ship and Glen’s voice echoed up from below.  “Miss Watson and the young man can come down.  Grumpy too if he promises not to yell anymore.  Be careful where you put your feet, though.  This whole thing is tipped on its side.”  Glen was glad all they could really step on was visuals, scanner arrays and the opposite door, not weapons or engine works which were on two of the walls.

            The young man came first.  Miss Watson followed with a word.  “The Professor said he can wait until it gets uncovered.”  Glen nodded as the young man stopped, stared and asked what was on his mind.

            “What happened to that other man?”

            “He went home for the present,” Glen said.

            “Oh?”

            “Yeah, roughly fourteen hundred years or so in the future.”  Both Miss Watson and the young man looked at Glen like maybe he was lying, but Glen ignored the reaction.  He took a hand from each and spoke of three things.

            “First, I am going to need you to tell the professor to get everyone back at least a hundred yards from this site.  Think football field.  Second, I never should have changed like that in front of everyone.  That is top secret and so is what you are about to see.  I will give you a phone number you can call and have this ship picked up, but first you must promise you will never speak of this to anyone, especially me.”

            “You?”  Miss Watson could not help the interjection.

            Glen nodded.  “Normally I don’t remember this stuff, like I am sleepwalking through life or something.  If you talk about it with me when I’m just normally walking around that might be like waking a sleepwalker.  That can be very dangerous, you know.”

            “And the third?”  The young man asked.

            “Promise you won’t let go.  It’s tradition.” 

            “Huh?  Sure.”

            Glen did not wait.  He vanished and a woman took his place.  She was dressed in a kind of dress that could only be described as Roman.  Miss Watson shrieked and let go.  The young man gulped but held on.

            “I better go back up and see the Professor gets everyone away from this thing,” the man said with only a little shakiness in his voice.

.            ”Good idea.”  The woman encouraged him.  “I was born around 761 BC.  No telling if I can fly this thing.”

            The man merely nodded and swallowed some more while he climbed back up the rope.

            “My name is Valencia by the way, like the orange.”  Valencia rolled her eyes at having to say that every time, but she stuck out her hand to shake with Miss Watson.

            “Debbie Watson.”  The woman put her hand out, but with some obvious reluctance.  Valencia grabbed the wrist and shook it vigorously.

            “I know who you are.  Just as well your man left it to us women, don’t you think?”

            “Oh, no.”  Miss Watson shook her head, shyly, but a little smile crept into the corners of her lips.  “He is not my man.”

            “He should be.”

            “Us women?”

            “What do I look like to you?  I know I can come across as butch sometimes but really!”

            “Oh, no.  I get it.  I just thought Glen, you, you know, he—“

            “I was born in 761 BC.  Want to know when I died?”

            “No!”  Miss Watson shouted the word.  “I mean, I don’t get it.  Why did Glen pick you?  I assume he picked you somehow.”

            Valencia smiled and took a moment to brush her long red hair straight back.  She had no bangs and no center part, either.  She picked up the rope and finally answered.  “Because I can fly,” she said, and she left the ground.  Miss Watson shut her eyes and began to mumble.

            “No, this is too much.  I can’t take this.  This is too much.”

            Valencia carried the rope up to the hatch and threw it out of the ship.  “Hey you!”  She shouted as the young man was coming back to give them the all clear.  Valencia wagged her finger to call him in close.  The young man came without hesitation.  He ignored the fact that Valencia had to be flying, like his brain simply refused to process that thought.

            “Ask her out,” Valencia said.  “She would really like that.  Now, get that Jeep out of here.”  The man nodded and ran to the jeep while Valencia closed the hatch.

            “I can’t believe you said that!”  Miss Watson came out of her mumbles long enough to yell.

            “What else are girlfriends for?”  Valencia asked and she flew to where she could stand on the actual floor of the ship.  That put her at ninety degrees to the earth.  “Ready to slide to the floor?”  She asked, but she did not wait for an answer.  She touched the necessary controls to cause the center of the ship to rotate within the hull.  It took a second, but as Miss Watson slid to the floor, exactly as prophesied, Valencia found herself standing upright.  “Now, let’s see.”

            Valencia was not sure how to work the rest of it.  There seemed to be some division of opinion in time.  At last she picked the consensus route and the whole ship shook rather vigorously.  It was like an earthquake outside the ship, but they felt little on the inside until the ship broke free of the earth and shot up about three miles into the sky in almost no time.

            “Wee-hee!”  Valencia shouted.

            “My God!”  Miss Watson had a very different reaction.  “Can we get back down?”  She ran to the hatch window and looked out on the clouds.

            “Not yet.”  Valencia said, and she moved them to an upper Earth orbit in about five minutes.

            Miss Watson said nothing at first while Valencia came to stand beside her.  At last Miss Watson shared her feelings.  “It’s beautiful.”

            “It is.”  Valencia said.  “I always wanted to see, but I didn’t dare tell Saturn.”

            “The planet?”  Miss Watson wondered.

            “The god.”  Valencia answered without batting an eye.  “But now I suppose we had better all go home.”  She returned to the controls and within another fifteen minutes, managed a relatively soft landing on the archeological site.

            “One thing I don’t understand.”  Miss Watson had apparently been thinking that whole time.  “If this is a sphere, why is it square inside?”

            “Ah!”  Valencia had already figured that out for herself and was rather proud at having done so.  “The six corner sections are cryogenic chambers.  This is an escape pod.  Normally, it is programmed to fly at near light speed to some destination.  Depending on where that is, though, they might sleep for a hundred years or even a thousand years if they aren’t picked up.  So they sleep until rescue so as not to age in the waiting time.”

            “But by the time they get rescued, everyone they know will be dead.”

            “Not human,” Valencia reminded her.  “Why it crashed to earth, I don’t know.  If there were humanoid survivors, the pod would have been picked up with the humanoids.  You may find some interesting bones on this dig, you know.”

            “You don’t mean—“  Miss Watson paused in thought while Valencia nodded.  “Sleep chambers?  You mean like, what do they call it, suspended animation?”

            “Here, let me show you.”  Valencia uncovered the view of one of the chambers and Miss Watson screamed.  There was a snarling wolf head staring at her, dead eyes open.

Exciting Scenes from Last Week: 

On Monday I blogged on the Other Earth (I invite you to click on the tab above and read all about it).  That other earth might best be called a “spatial” world as conceived by Hawkings, which is to say, a completely natural phenomenon.  Since that universe is only one notch (so to speak) from our own, the laws of physics hold true there except for one thing.  There is a strong influx of creative and variable energy there which allows for the manipulation of matter and energy – or to be more pedestrian about it, there is magic on that Other Earth.

This, however, is not what most people think of when they imagine alternate universes. 

Instead, people tend to think and the literature of Science Fiction tends to portray what I call “temporal” universes.  These are earths where, in my view, something significant or several significant events occurred differently at some point in history and thus the whole world turned out different.  In fact, that is what the Gaian people – humans from a very technologically advanced earth call these time created universes: the Worlds.

Let me first say that unless the event is significant, chances are history won’t remember.  Family history might be changed for a time; even national history in some small ways, but eventually the changes will fade or blend into the background and this universe will go on without division.  History paints with a very broad brush.

In order to create a new universe (a new timeline) the change must be historic.  Think of Alexander (the Great) being assassinated with his father and so he never conquers the Persians and never becomes “great.”  Lincoln surviving his assassination attempt, on the other hand, might not be enough by itself to change things since Johnson, his vice-president thrust into the presidency, pretty much followed Lincoln’s outline for reconstruction.  In a couple of thousand years, what will it matter?  Then again, tanks suddenly appearing on the Appian Way and rumbling into Ancient Rome would certainly change things.

In the Gaian universe, by way of comparison, the steam engine was discovered by the Greeks centuries before it was “discovered” in Alexandria.  AND, there were people back then who became aware of the steam discovery and who had some notion of what it might be good for.  As a result, Alexander the Great laid rail lines all the way up the silk road to China…

The thing about these Worlds which is important from a story perspective is first, to acknowledge that our earth is not at the pinnacle of technological advancement.  There are all sorts of earths with a technology we cannot imagine who are already traveling the worlds or just learning to travel among the worlds.  The second point is to realize that not everyone traveling the worlds will have the best interests of others at heart.  In fact, some will be downright dangerous – and some might not even be entirely human…

So, you might ask which is the real (original) timeline?  The only possible answer is they all are.  There is no reason to distinguish any line on that level, to think one is more original than another..  Of course, some do.  The Sorvee, for example, regard themselves as real and everyone else more like intelligent animals needing to be controlled and trained.  The Shinarites imagine people from other worlds as hardly more than shadows of real life.  But thus the stories…

Now, there is another form of “alternate universes” but that will have to wait until the next post.

###

At present there are no stories of the Worlds above.  In time, barring any significant historical change, there will be.

            The best thing about being seventeen and a high school graduate is having a whole summer to laze around before college.  Knowing this, Glen’s mother signed him up for a summer course.  Glen was ticked at first, but the course was in Archeology, a topic that interested Glen thanks to his Uncle, and it was being taught at the Museum of Natural History in New York City so all in all that was not so bad.  The train ride into the city, the path, and the chance to take the A-train all the way up the West Side alone made it worthwhile.

            Glen’s Uncle was an amateur archeologist in Arkansas.  He never got out of the ninth grade, and the PhDs had terrible names for a man like him, but he could read the soil better than anyone Glen ever knew, and he taught Glen to do the same.  Glen’s Uncle cherished the things he found, and he was respectful of the descendants of his digs who still lived on reservations in Oklahoma.  They were glad to see that someone was making the effort to learn and preserve their history and heritage, and so with that approval in his pocket, Glen’s Uncle did a lot of digging.  Eventually, he had several articles published in scholarly magazines, and more than once the University of Arkansas called on his help in their digs, and why?  Because Glen’s Uncle could read the dirt better than anyone Glen ever knew.

            On the last day of the class in New York, Glen and his classmates met early in the morning, piled onto a bus, and drove to a dig back in New Jersey somewhere up around High Point.  New Jersey Indians were not nearly as well heeled as the Caddo in the Southwest.  The dig was small, but interesting when they took the tour.  Then they had time to wander and watch as long as they stayed out of the roped off areas.  Most of the students watched the work in progress.  Glen knew that was like watching grass grow, so he thought to wander toward one area that was cleared of vegetation and grass but which was not roped off.

            “Excuse me.”  He stopped a man who had gone back to his jeep for a trowel and brush or something.  “Has this been cleared for future exploration?”  The whole area was dug into a pit about a foot deep, but no one was working there.

            “No,” the man responded.  “We thought there were signs there.  It looked promising, but it proved to be nothing.”

            “What do you mean nothing?”  Glen asked.  He examined the dirt.  “Look at this.  There are red, brown, and yellow specks mixed in all of this.  Somebody dug through several layers of dirt to bury something here.  Look.  There is even some charcoal here like from a ceremonial fire mixed in.”

            “That’s what I thought.”  The man swerved to join Glen.  “But we dug some test holes.  Here, here and I think here.”  He pointed to three spots along the perimeter.  “We went down about six feet but found nothing.”

            “Do the test in the middle first to see if there is something there.  That’s what my Uncle taught me.  If there is something, you can mark the perimeter after and work your way slowly to pay dirt.”

            “Your Uncle?”

            Glen looked up at the man and felt the embarrassing need to lie.  “University of Arkansas.”  It wasn’t a complete lie, he told himself.  “Got a shovel?  Mind if I dig since you folks aren’t interested?”

            The man hardly hesitated.  He took Glen to a stack of shovels and let him pick.  “I always thought there was something there only my colleagues talked me out of it.  Good luck, kid.”

            Glen dug, right in the middle, and not very far before two things happened.  First his shovel went “Clunk!”  It was not the clunk of metal shovel against stone, but the sound of metal against metal.  A few more shovelfuls and he uncovered a two-foot wide space and knew it was a sphere.  The other thing that happened was an older gentleman saw him and started a row.

            “Put that shovel down.  Get away from there this instant.”  The man made a terrific racket and got everyone’s attention as he came running.  To be sure, the poor man was terrified of being sued in case Glen got hurt; but Glen ignored him.  He continued to remove clods of dirt until he had the whole top hatch uncovered.  You see, he was driven because he recognized the symbol in the center of the hatch.  It was the symbol of the royal house of Hacharri of the seventeenth Hungdin dynasty of the Humanoid Empire.  That same voice in his head was telling him the ship, and it was a ship, had to be at least two thousand years old.

            When the man arrived, he stopped and stared.  The younger man Glen had first met was there as well, along with his teacher, Miss Watson.  They were all open mouthed and staring, so Glen thought it safe to speak.

            “Got a rope?”  He asked as he touched the external release button.  The hatch popped and there was a great whoosh of air while the two pressures equalized before the hatch opened wide to reveal a dark hole in the earth.

            “Rope.”  The younger man yelled and a University student came running.  “Flashlights.”  He added the word, but two other students had to run off to fetch them, and a lantern.

            “I might be able to get the lights on,” Glen said.  “This thing has a ten-thousand year half-life battery and it can’t have been buried here much more than two thousand years.”

            “What?”  The old man did not believe what he heard.  He looked at Miss Watson, but she could only shrug.

            When the rope arrived, someone backed up a jeep and the rope got tied to the trailer hitch.  Then Glen prepared to descend, but the old man got in his way.

            “You can’t go down there.  There is no telling what is down there or how deep it is.”  Glen dropped the rope into the hole and they clearly heard the clunk as it struck bottom.  He grinned for the old man.  “Absolutely no chance of you going down there.  Miss Watson, your class needs to leave, now.”  Miss Watson only looked disappointed, and the young man Glen met first looked equally disappointed.  But then something or someone rose up inside of Glen and he did something rarely seen in seventeen year old boys in those days.  He told off a full college professor who was used to being in charge.

            “No!  I am the only one who can go down there.  You have no idea what you are dealing with.  You touch the wrong spot and you can blow up the whole eastern seaboard.”  Then Glen left that place and Captain Dimitri Alesandros of the Solar Defense Force came from the future to stand in his place.  There were plenty of gasps and shock when Dimitri appeared, but Glen thought the military Captain would at least command respect and have the right words for the situation, him being more mature and all.

            “Move it fatso,” Dimitri said, and somewhere in time and space Glen sighed.  “Hand me the torch, er, flashlight.”  With that, he slowly lowered himself into the hole and no one dared stop him.

            Pumpkin zoomed into the barn and shouted at the top of her wee lungs.  “Brunch!”

            “Yipee!”  Martok’s excited shout interrupted everyone, and made the empathic fairy excited as well.  She flitted back and forth and did several back flips in mid-air before she finally came to land on Alice’s shoulder.  Martok was just too scary, she said.

            “This treaty is amazing.”  Alice spoke for the first time in an hour as if having a fairy land on her shoulder triggered her mouth.  “It is so detailed and there is not a flaw in it.”

            “It lasted four-hundred years,” Martok responded.  “A single species treaty lasting that long is good.  This one was interstellar, between two species, and ambitious ones at that.  The Zalanid were really that good.”

            “Remarkable.  I have to meet this Mister Smith of yours.” Alice added under her breath as Emile stood up from the back of a console and spoke.

            “That should do it.”

            “Good,” Martok replied and he switched it on.  “Hold your ears, Pumpkin.”  He tuned to the right frequency, picked up the microphone and spoke in a sound like metal garbage cans being thrown against garage doors—only louder.  When he was finished, he switched the machine off without waiting for a response.  “Hopefully that will delay any more hostilities until we can get there to meet with them.”  He then removed a small metal ball from the communicator and slipped it in his pocket.

            “Didn’t you need that magic metal circle thing?”  Alice wondered about the communication.  Alice of Avalon needed it last time to speak to the Vordan prisoner.  Martok merely smiled to reveal his teeth one last time before he vanished and let Glen return to his own time and place.

            “No,” Glen said before he took a breath as if he was still Martok speaking, which in a sense he was.  “Martok is fluent in Vordan and has the voice for it.  It is English that gives him trouble.”  He smiled a very human smile at that thought before he added, “Okay, Pumpkin.  You can stop holding your ears now.”

            “Breakfast?”  Miriam the marine suggested, and they all thought it was a good suggestion.  They were quiet as they walked up to the main building except for Mirowen and Emile who brought up the rear and were still whispering.

            Lockhart met them at the door.  “Cafeteria food.”  He apologized and escorted them to the cafeteria.  “When are we going to get some alien visitors who know how to cook?”

            “As long as they don’t try to cook us.”  Sergeant Thomas suggested what several thought.

            “No.”  Lockhart quickly pointed at Glen, but Glen just shook his head.

            “They liked their flesh raw.”  He did not explain.

            Everyone found something in the cafeteria line they wanted.  It was truly a brunch with eggs and pancakes as well as roast beef, baked ham, fried chicken and plenty of greens.  When they found a round table that could fit eight, they sat and the small talk started.  It was only a short while, though, before Bobbi and Colonel dipstick joined them and forced everyone to squeeze. 

            Pumpkin and Boston were getting along well.  The fairy sat right on the table in front of Boston’s plate and picked tiny bites of this and that.  She also had a juice glass of milk which she said was like a bucket for her.  “You try drinking a bucket of milk.”  She said that more than once, but she enjoyed it.

            Glen was made to sit with Boston on one side and Alice on the other.  Glen did his best to ignore Alice.  He knew she had questions.  He pretended to focus on Pumpkin at first, and then he trained his eyes on Mirowen and Emile.  Then he was glad when Bobbi joined them even if the Colonel, whose real name was Veber, like “Vay-ber” not Weber came with her.  Of course, Glen imagined Darth Vader when he saw the man, but in private he used the name dipstick.

            Doctor Roberts tried to hide his face.

            “Too late Doctor Roberts,” Colonel Veber pointed even as he motioned for the marines to keep their seats.  “You are already eating with an officer, isn’t that right?”  He looked squarely at Glen. 

            “Me?  Never, that I recall.  Doctor Mishka was a full Colonel, but she was soviet.  Casidy was a light Colonel, but it was more honorary than real.  He was really a Federal Marshal.  Michelle Marie had no rank.  I think George just kept her around for window dressing.  She was kind of like a team mascot for a while there.”

            “George?”  Someone had to ask.

            “Washington.”  Glen responded with an absolutely straight face and everyone hushed for a second because they knew Glen was telling the truth.

            “My buddy Lars had rank.”  Pumpkin spoke into the silence.

            “Captain.”  Glen nodded.  “But that was before there was a United States.”  He grinned for the fairy and Pumpkin giggled, just a little.

            Colonel Veber raised an eyebrow, but only one before he turned on Emile Roberts.  “You know, I still think you should be shot for stealing government property.”  Doctor Roberts merely shrugged, but Mirowen got flush.

            “That was my property,” she shot back at the man.  “It did not belong to the United States government.”

            “The mysterious accomplice I assume.”  Colonel Veber smiled and nodded to the beauty.  “But you don’t exactly sound like a patriot yourself.”

            “She’s an illegal alien,” Bobbi interjected. 

            “From further away than you can even imagine,” Lockhart added, and several people had to hide their smiles.

            Colonel Veber did not find it funny.  “I could have you arrested right now.”  He threw his napkin to the table.

            “Fake maple syrup!”  Glen yelled and distracted everyone.  “Don’t you have any real maple?  I hate the fake stuff.”  He looked up at the Colonel.  “And threats give me indigestion.” 

            Colonel Veber was not intimidated, but he took back his napkin and focused on his brunch for a bit.  There was silence around the table then until Alice picked up her steno pad and spoke.

            “So what is a Wolv?”  She grinned at Glen.  She knew that he was now trapped into answering and everyone turned to listen.