Elder Stow got taken to a base just north of York, well away from the bombing areas, where the bombing runs could be viewed, evaluated, and adjusted as needed. He spent three days there locked up and interrogated. He told the truth and held nothing back, which surprised his interrogators. He did not need to be persuaded.
He did not focus on his feelings, nor the way he changed in his attitude and perspective over those years, but that was expected. No one asked about that. Gott-Druk were a naturally private people. They did not express their feelings well, even if they often wore their feelings on their sleeve, as Alexis used to say. Besides, this became something like a report, and personal feelings had no place in a report.
Elder Stow did not share much about the little spirits he encountered, in part because they would not be believed and might be taken a signs of metal distress, and in part, because his people had stories about just such little ones. They were often not good stories. Such stories sometimes gave Gott-Druk children nightmares.
He also did not share about finding the long, lost expedition of Burrgh the Mighty—the first attempt to retake the earth for the Gott-Druk in those slower-than-light Agdaline ships. He did mention Sukki, but he talked about her as a young woman they happened across, and one who belongs in the future. He did not say exactly when in the future.
One thing Elder Stow did talk about was his impression of Homo Sapiens. He emphasized their capacity for love, courage, and compassion. These were things the Gott-Druk might not outwardly admit but might inwardly admire. He also showed examples of their ingenuity and their capacity to face trouble and adversity head on with only faith and hope to guide them. He concluded that portion of his report by saying that if it was the intention of the Gott-Druk to break the spirit of the English people with the day and night bombing, they would fail, miserably.
Elder Stow had little hope of converting his Gott-Druk listeners who had a lifetime of anti-human propaganda poured into their heads. When the brainwashed teachers all say the same thing, and your peers buy into it like sheep, it is hard not to be brainwashed yourself. Rare is the independent and revolutionary thinker. Elder Stow understood that most minds would be so closed, hatred for humans would be all they could see. And the Gott-Druk were very good at closed minds. Stubborn and Stupid as the Kairos called it. But some of the younger ones might take a second look. Many were in their early twenties when they came to earth. Now in their early thirties, they were probably thinking they should be home getting married and starting their own families.
With that in mind, Elder Stow talked all about the marriages of Boston and Roland, Katie and Lockhart, Decker and Nanette. He told how Lockhart and Katie adopted Sekhmet and Artie in the ancient days, and Sukki in more recent times. They could not have children of their own on the road because those children would be trapped in the time zone they were born into. He explained how Millie and Evan stayed in ancient Rome because they wanted to have children. Millie wanted a little girl. He did not hold anything back on that score, and figured he got to some of the younger crew members with that.
Since Elder Stow cooperated and needed no persuasion to tell where he had been over the last nine years, he got to ask a few questions of his own, presumably pertaining to the activities of his people in the last nine years. Things were progressing, but the continent was not being depopulated. He played dumb, like he did not understand. He got told the change in plan. The idea, now, was to make the humans into a slave race. Elder Stow argued that slaves were not nearly as efficient as the technology they possessed, but his interrogators refused to listen. He concluded, out loud, that there had to be another reason, since the slave idea made no sense. That was the only time he got hit and told not to speak of it again.
It sounded suspicious, but it was not evidence of the Masters. For that, he had to wait until the Mother and Father of the expedition arrived on the morning of the fourth day. Immediately, Mother gave herself away when she called him a traveler, though he had not worn his recognizable glamour that whole time. Father called him a liar—though he had to be the greatest liar that ever lived to invent so many chronologically perfect, elaborately detailed, and consistent stories. He indignantly offered to show them if that was necessary to prove the point. They appeared to secretly smile, but Elder Stow caught it. It was on their sleeves, even as Alexis said. They took him up on the offer and Elder Stow kept his own smile in check.
Elder Stow got his old scanner which had been stored in a box, untouched. He directed the medium-sized people transport to the right spot on some man’s farm. The transport could carry up to forty people or soldiers. There were presently twenty-two, with the two being the pilot and co-pilot. Father and Mother, five Elders, seven younger officers, and five security guards accompanied Elder Stow to the precise location. When they arrived, he set the parameters of the time gate in his mind before he pushed the button that burned out the scanner. He did not want the masters to learn how to locate the time gates no matter what.
“Well,” he overreacted. “This poor little scanner got so much use over these years I’m surprised it lasted this long.” The others grunted. Elder Stow was a chief engineer, so they all assumed he knew what he was talking about.
“But what good is that?” Mother yelled at him. “How do you intend to activate the time gate now?”
Elder Stow shook his head. “The scanner only locates the time gates. It has to be activated by something out of sync with time. Only something that belongs in a different time period can activate the gate.” Elder Stow clamped his mouth shut. He suddenly feared that like Lincoln, he might be telling them too much.
“But we have no such thing, unless you mean something that is more than sixty years old,” Father said.
Elder Stow continued to shake his head, though he remembered that there were twenty or forty years in a generation, depending on the context, but sixty years was the original maximum lifespan of the Kairos. In this case, only the Masters would know that. “Wouldn’t do,” Elder Stow said. “Any such artifact would have been here over the last sixty years, so it lived through those years, so to speak, so it is still in its proper time zone. No, it has to be something displaced in time itself.”
“Where can we find such a thing?” Father demanded.
Mother snarled. “So, we came here for nothing,” she said. “You cannot prove your madness. You are the liar Father first proclaimed.”
Elder Stow stopped shaking his head. He pulled an American ten-dollar bill from his pocket. “This bill came forward with me when I came through the gate from the 1930s. It is now displaced in time. It is a bit worn, but it was worn when I got it. Still, you see it came forward in time without ill affect and can now open the time gate.” It has organic fibers, he thought. Metal coins would not work, but no need to tell them that. He squeezed the bill between his thumb and forefinger and reached out carefully. Everyone saw the shimmering in the air when it appeared.
Elder Stow backed up. He was in danger if he went through. He was well over fifty and 2015 was another seventy-four years away. Over the centuries, the Gott-Druk doubled their life expectancy from forty to eighty years. Ninety was common enough but one hundred was about the limit. No Gott-Druk ever live one hundred and thirty years, and Mother and Father were in their late sixties. Suddenly ageing an additional seventy-four years would make them over one hundred and forty, and that would surely kill them.
“Here, let me go through to demonstrate. I promise I’ll come right back,” Elder Stow said.
“Wait,” Father shouted and waved at Elder Stow. Two guards came to grab Elder Stow’s arms. “I don’t trust you to come back.”
“We must test it ourselves,” Mother said, and with a glance at Father, she stepped through the time gate. They waited until the time gate deactivated. They all waited, almost a whole hour before Father turned on Elder Stow.
“Maybe she saw something to explore,” Elder Stow suggested. “I still have the dollar. I could go to look for her.”
Father stuck out his hand. Elder Stow handed over the ten-dollar bill. Father activated the time gate and took one of the Elders and two guards with him. “Hold him until I return,” he told the guards. They went through and immediately people stepped away from a great flash of light. The Kairos Danna, the goddess stepped from the light surrounded by dozens of elves, fairies, and dwarfs, and she herself deactivated the time gate.
“Elder Tanik,” Danna said. “You are now the senior officer of the expedition. May I recommend you go home? The Gott-Druk may visit here, but nine years is not a visit.”
“But… We have not finished our mission…” Elder Tanik shook in the face of the goddess, but he responded. Elder Stow spoke plainly in answer to his fellow elder even as he pulled his arms free from the grip of the guards.
“A daft mission. We cannot make the German’s strong enough to clean the continent for our purposes, which was the original mission in case you have forgotten. What is more, we cannot introduce a disease as they did during the last great conflict because any disease that can infect the humans can also infect us. I had forgotten about that. Such an evil thing should never be done. The Spanish Flu ruined the last expedition, and rightly so.”
“But wait,” one of the other Elders spoke to Elder Stow since he dared not look at the goddess. “What will we do when Father and Mother return?”
“They will never return,” Danna said as she explained about the ageing process and introduced Rupert, the young boy that stood at her side. She said, “Rupert comes from the place the time gate comes out. He will bury the bags of bones when they come through in the future. Listen. Your Father and Mother are gone. Go home, or I will send you where you do not want to go.”
Elder Stow began to walk toward the transport. One by one the rest of the Gott-Druk followed. Elder Stow felt bad about luring Mother and Father to their death, but clearly, they were serving the Masters, and that made them enemy combatants as Decker would say. Still, he did not feel too bad about it, and the rest of his people showed no signs of concern. He knew they were all human of a sort, however, they were not Homo Sapiens.
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MONDAY
Episode 9.12 Home, will end book 9 and end the series. Until then, Happy Reading
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Storyteller Tales & Thoughts 