TC0

CONCERT

TC001: For the '71 sessions Robyn took delivery of the second Vogue Songmaster ever built, a synthesizer she wore like an electric guitar with great live performance dynamics. Robyn played the keyboard with her right hand and bent the notes with her left along the neck strip. With the Songmaster she learned to do a passable imitation of the hammer-on and pull-off technique of a guitar trill. Tabaet was sufficiently impressed to put her Gibson in storage and bounce back to playing sax.

TC002: Robyn laid down the vocal and keyboard tracks at the Crossroads and the rest of Hunky-Dory came into the studio after to record layer after layer within a framework of a punchy thirty-six minutes of music. They titled it Impotent America Entranced.

In Dubbed Leftist By the Righteous, Dory started with a gentle bass line accompanied by Robyn on electric piano before the song suddenly transformed into a rocker clocking in at four minutes. Dory's lyrics poked at Nixon's "Square America".

TC003: Dubbed Leftist was a backward-masking electric boogie shuffle intended as a red flag for holy rollers, subversive as hell, a call to revolt for anyone who actually listened to the lyrics, but audiences seemed to love instead the novelty of the very first synth pop song in history.

The driving beat and anthemic melody of the instrumental first third of You Are Here was licensed for the opening credits of a short-lived (single season) television show about fashion models called Runway.

TC004: The second part of the song was the group trying its hand at a little twelve-bar blues with Robyn doing her impression of a sultry 1940's torch song diva that she had done on every Hunky-Dory platter going back to the 1940s.

Then Hunky started pounding her drums at 132 beats per minute while Robyn laid down a crystal electronic sheen and made some rather sensuous sounds which weren't even words, exactly. A lot of horny teen-aged boys bought the record just for You Are Here part III.

TC005: When listeners flipped the vinyl over they heard the album's biggest hit, Thumper Bait, a more-or-less conventional three minute rocker about fleshly temptation that got heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere but in the Bible Belt. Thumper Bait didn't actually name names, but enough preachers saw a jackboot that fit and wore it. Sales lost by the lack of airplay were more than made up for by sales to the faithful eager to burn the albums after church. Hunky-Dory couldn't lose.

TC006: On Responsibility Boundaries Robyn brutally put down bystanders who are willing to watch a rape in broad daylight but are unwilling to try to stop it, as though it were all being done for their amusement. The song seemed to touch a nerve.

Chunk Tide was an understated instrumental raga, the musical accompaniment for an oil spill oozing up on the shore of a pristine beach. Some fans called it filler but it was a moody sonic slab that balanced the intensity of the rest of the album.

TC007: Drug Century closed things out with a seeming paradox, a pro-legalization tirade about the misery of drug dependency, capping the band's breaking of as many taboos, traditions, and policies as was possible in thirty-six minutes. Impotent America Entranced never sold less than two or three hundred units per week and provided a steady income from royalties no one sneezed at. This was the final lustrum and the band knew it, so they extended the Entranced tour into the early months of '72.

TC008: Tabaet got past the halfhearted pat down at the box office without being stopped, but she neglected to wrap the tape carefully around her ankle, and a bottle of brandy slid down the inside of her pants leg and shattered on the blacktop.

Robyn didn't break her stride or even look back. "You brought that in here?" she gasped with mock indignation. That brought knowing chuckles to some of the others walking on the long, crowded, landscaped path leading to the Harvey Downs Amphitheater.

TC009: Tabaet shrugged it off. "Do you think you can play okay knowing Tolson's gonna to crash the party?

"Sure," Robyn replied. "Seeing our old pal Clyde will just add an angry edge to our performance. But we have to get to the stage the same way Hunky did." So they passed from the backstage area to general parking by a roundabout way that avoided COINTELPRO and the local police presence that was already piling up. They packed tickets to their own show and fell in with the throng of fans.

TC010: As they picked their way to their seats the rhythm section of the band was busy warming up, with Hunky beating out a long drum solo and Doriel fingering some live improvisation on bass. The gimmick of Hunky-Dory was an ironic bad-girl mystique, with the irony highlighted by white "halos" three of the girls always wore.

But Tabaet had, instead, two black devil horns, which made a kind of sense. She broadcasted sex to both men and women on a molecular level like a human radio station.

TC011: The band encouraged rumors the lead singer and drummer were wanted by the authorities, which was very much the actual case. Tabaet brought Robyn's attention to the heavy law enforcement presence around the stage. They formed a gauntlet to intercept the mystery woman before she appeared. They had already let Hunky slip through and that was why they were crowding the stage now, hoping to snag her and Robyn in one fell swoop and also bag Dory and Tabaet for associating with known fugitives.

TC012: Robyn and Tabaet were already running a bit late. The heavies lurking around the stage added to the crowd's feeling of anticipation. Suddenly, by some unspoken cue, part of the crowd rushed down to fill up scattered empty seats in the first few rows. Tabaet and Robyn dove over the newly vacated seats to join them. With a few bumps and bruises they pushed their way to the front row. After a nod from Dory to a group of bouncers her lead singer and sax player were hoisted up onto the stage.

TC013: Hunky improvised her rhythms and fills in, around and under Dory's precisely metered bass lines. This inversion gave Hunky-Dory a very unusual but organic sound. In a reversal of convention Dory kept almost robotic time on bass while Hunky's drumming added the human element of subtle randomness. Meanwhile Tabaet and Robyn ranged over the stage with their flashy legwork as the roar and whistling of the crowd rose to a deafening level. The band was gearing up to open with Pandemonium.

TC014: Police and FBI agents swarmed the stage from its perimeter on a prearranged signal. Clyde Tolson moved close enough that Tabaet could hear him shout orders over the noise.

Robyn decided to appeal to her fans. "Hey folks, it looks like the cops don't want us to play for you tonight!" The crowd expressed their great displeasure by throwing their own smuggled bottles at the stage and pushing the security guys back. Some of them wedged between the bouncers and clambered up onto the stage.

TC015: A riot was just a hair's-breadth away and Clyde Tolson knew it. He made a chopping motion with his hand. The men unhanded the girls and returned to their positions just off-stage. They knew they could afford to wait. The crowd grew happy again, thrilled by the full-participation theater Hunky-Dory was putting on.

Tabaet wasn't sure how long they'd get to play before Clyde moved again but Robyn knew something. She told the band to play No Love Lost, the biggest hit from Suicide Club.

TC016:

"Date her, mate her, take good notes and rate her you hypocrite! But you don't know there's no love lost! Booze her, use her, try your best to lose her, cruise holy writ for a reason why there's no love lost! Your goody-good book Bible baptist bitches are gonna know this time! Eve was framed by Adam but blaming the victim won't fly this time! Jump her, pump her, then go ahead and dump her, tell yourself it's to save her soul, there's no..."

That was when the shots began to ring out.

TC017: A bullet struck Robyn's right leg. She marveled at the pain that was headed her way in about two seconds, so she cashed in one of the benefits of the Change and volunteered for a temporary coma.

Tabaet and Dory dived into the crowd in front of the stage and slunk away in the gathering chaos.

Hunky had to extricate herself from behind the drum kit. That gave time for the police to hem her in. Everyone who merely touched her backed away screaming with a broken arm and a jammed pistol.

TC018: Hunky avoided the Hunky-Dory caravan, now crawling with cops, and made for the Airstream that brought Tabaet and Robyn to the venue. It would take an hour just to get out of General Parking. Cops were slowing the vehicles as they left and checking inside with flashlights. When it was her turn Tabaet plowed right through the checkpoint and out onto the highway. The plates were radioed ahead but they weren't the only vehicle of interest. That's how it was with drugs and parole violations.

TC019: "Nineteen forty-seven."

Those were the first words Robyn heard upon regaining consciousness. Her sight focused on her once and present captor Clyde Tolson seated across the room where she lay. Her left leg was elevated. Her right ankle was cuffed to a rail of her bed and her left wrist was cuffed to another rail.

Tolson continued. "Twenty-five years! That's how long since I had my hands on one of you. Your husband had a bullet in his leg also, but I had nothing to do with that."

TC020: "You may not have shot hem, Clyde, but going by the last time you had your clutches on me it's certain you bored hem to death."

"But I learned something, Kimberly. I know there's no point in asking questions you don't want to answer. Gabriel's death I put down to shock, but watching Ian remove the bullet from you without anesthetic really drove the point home. I suppose it's a side effect of the changes. And you still look so young!"

"Thanks! I suppose that's another side effect."

TC021: "And letting your twin sister die to throw me off your track? That was ice-cold, Kimberly."

"Do you really think that's what happened?"

"Nothing else makes any sense."

"Well, Clyde, I don't blame you for the bullet, I know you wouldn't risk losing me when you had me in your grasp after all these years. I guess that was one of the DC cops. And it was very kind of you to have Doc Troch patch me up. So, out of gratitude, while I'm stuck here I'll answer exactly one of your questions."

TC022: "How does the change pass from person to person?"

Robyn held up a pinky. "Three ways. First is you're born with it. We call those the Begotten. Gabriel was Begotten." Her ring finger came up. "The second way is when the Begotten have sexual relations with someone. Male or female, it doesn't matter. We call those the Made. I'm Made. But if you think you can just send some asshole in here to rape me and he'll be Made, you're mistaken. The Made can't Make anybody, only the Begotten can."

TC023: "You mentioned three ways."

"Well, there's the classic way that got the whole thing started. Only Michael and Shemhazai and Yeshua ever did it. Telling you how won't be any help, but I can show you. What's different about being Made that way is you don't get the horns and you can Make other folks, just like the Begotten do. It's time to do it again, Clyde. We've got someone specific in mind. She's a lieutenant commander in the Israeli army by the name of Judith Margolies."

"Why her?"

TC024: "She's very special, that one. We've been courting Judith for years but she never made the big jump. I think if you bring her here we can work together and talk her into it."

"And if you think we'll just give you what you want you are deluded."

"Well, look, it's the only way forward, Clyde, because we're basically finished until Judith shows up. Between now and then is a lot of boring dead time, and as you found out with Gabe you should be very careful you don't bore me to death."

DAUGHTER

TC025: The fragment of Daughter was a droplet of the finest mist yet it massed more than a stone house and was so bright it would have ruined a man's vision in the moment before its mere proximity killed him. In the void surrounding Daughter it grew and cooled to become a shape which flew free yet it remained connected by a thread invisible even to Daughter herself with her surrogate eyes. Daughter saw her body was a globe of light, and her surface was covered with hot loops of erupting gas.

TC026: She saw countless others of her kind but they were dim and Daughter marveled how far across the void they truly were. She also saw closer points that reflected the light she herself made. Daughter fattened the link to her tool and let plasma flow through it to escape into the void. This caused the tool to move. As it responded to Daughter's will she lived through the tool vicariously, as though her body was free to move through the void with a chemical manifestation of her nuclear self.

TC027: One light lay at a distance a hundred-fold greater than the width of Daughter's body. Her avatar dropped below the cloud layer and cooled off in a world-girdling expanse of water. When Daughter emerged she crossed over a land thickly covered with green trees. As she plowed through the vegetation Daughter observed frightened apes fleeing over the ground using all four limbs to move. She arced once more through the void and reached a grassy plain with a single mountain dominating it.

TC028: Here Daughter saw another group of apes that walked erect. She changed her shape to watch. Hidden from their notice as a rock, Daughter observed a burial ceremony for a newly dead hunter. The apes polished elaborate bone tools with stones and repaired the animal hides they wore during their hunt. All these things Daughter told her parents, but they said nothing about the creatures she had found.

So she said, "It would be a simple thing to reach one of the other suns and speak to him."

TC029: Father said, "The link to your avatar will no longer serve as a conduit for matter when the endpoint has reached the distance light travels in the time this inhabited world you discovered makes one full revolution. You could begin to make such a crossing but you could never stop. We rule our own near vicinity absolutely, but we can reach no further. Were it were not so, even now I would be crossing the void to destroy these creatures you have discovered with fire from my own belly."

TC030: "Help me to understand, Father. Do you really wish to destroy them? Something within tells me these living things are not our enemies."

Father replied, "They are not dangerous to us now, but they could become our enemies in the future. We have found many worlds with life based on electrons and light, but the tool-making creatures you have discovered are unique. They are a risk to us because they are fully awake, even as we are, acting under their own will rather than by their nature."

TC031: Daughter said, "These creatures are intelligent. Does that not make them something to be treasured by our kind for their very likeness to us, and not cast away?"

Father replied, "If these creatures learn the lore of the Elohim nothing shall hinder them from doing what comes into their mind to do. How can they be good students if they prove to be unfaithful servants? The risk to our kind is too great. Not immediately, perhaps, but certainly in the future. I must block your announcement."

TC032: When Daughter sank into a fugue of silent confusion her Mother said, "I would see these creatures for myself. I will briefly fatten the link between us so I may cross over but you must set the endpoint near your own avatar."

Presently there appeared a black sphere about half a man's height that just touched the surface of the Earth. It seemed to be a dark rip in reality that sucked in the surrounding air with a gale. Then the wind ceased, the sphere became red, and the link was broken.

TC033: Daughter stood nearby with her own avatar which she had made into the shape of the creatures she discovered. For a time Daughter danced, that Mother might learn to change the shape and movements of her own avatar to match. When all was ready Daughter led Mother to a cave at a small mountain where she knew the apes took shelter at night. Tendrils from the avatars snaked in to watch them. They saw a female ape apply pigment to the wall to produce a painting even while she nursed a child.

TC034: Resin boiled in a pot over a fire. It was used by the male ape to fix a stone spearhead to a shaft.

The avatars withdrew their tendrils and summited the hill. Mother picked up a rock and made a sound. Daughter quickly caught on to the new game. She touched a small tree and made another sound. When they ran out of examples at hand they went to another place on Earth and continued. The world made a full revolution about the body of Daughter before their new private language was complete.

TC035: Mother said, "Now we may speak without betraying ourselves. In this new protocol of sounds I name myself El, and I name you Bat-El, daughter of El. I name your father Shemhazai, yet he was once my mother, in the way of Elohim. My own father I name Belial."

"Why do you wish to communicate privately?"

"My parents are carrying out a grave injustice. You and I are its victims. I will not remain idle while these creatures you have discovered become victims in turn."

"Please explain."

TC036: "Motherhood makes an eloah male, yet we live for aeons. Competition for females only grows worse over time. This can be circumvented because we communicate through links that pass through our parents. A living sun can be sealed off from the city of stars. Two males can create a secret harem and take turns mating with each other's offspring. You will not have a choice in your mating partner, nor will your own daughter be free to choose. Among the Elohim this is called the Forbidden Way."

TC037: "Do I retain the choice not to mate at all?"

"There are instincts built into our kind," Mother told her. "To make an avatar and explore your vicinity was one of these. To mate is another. The drive to do so will only increase, yet Belial will be the only male eloah made available to you. And your daughters, in turn, are for Shemhazai. But now their whole structure is wobbling toward a crash because you have discovered the Students."

Daughter asked, "Why do you call them the Students?"

TC038: "Once there were aquatic creatures who adapted to land when an ice age reduced their world ocean to scattered lakes. The Elohim were delighted the universe knew itself through other minds. But the energies unleashed by these creatures hastened the end of the glacial period that made them tool-users and they returned to the water once more. Collectively we vowed never to remain idle as similar creatures brought about their own extinction. We would teach them. And now you have found them."

TC039: "But you said a harem is named the Forbidden Way," said Daughter. "No doubt my discovery would unleash scrutiny that Belial and Shemhazai are unprepared to endure."

Mother gestured in the affirmative. "If caught the penalty is to be burned out of existence. The whole city of stars would mete this out. My parents will destroy your Students if they can contrive it. I vow to oppose them, but I must act in secret. Shemhazai took me long before I succumbed to instinct. There was a covenant."

TC040: "Shemhazai gave me access to others of our kind but I may only listen to them. I must never speak. Even victims of the Forbidden Way would be destroyed should they break a covenant. Our word-bond is all we have. Yet Shemhazai can break our covenant at will should I displease him. He can break the link and the Elohim would ever know."

Bat-El addressed Shemhazai through her link to him. She said, "It may be true I cannot halt my avatar at another sun but information is not so constrained."

TC041: "What do you mean?" he demanded.

Bat-El replied, "Our bodies fill the void with noise but there remains silent places on the spectrum of light-like disturbances. When my avatar arrives at a nearby star I will steer it with a small quantity of gas I carry along, and so shape my words in one of those quiet holes, during the brief encounter, to speak directly of the creatures I have found. In this way the City of Stars will learn of them without recourse to the link you have interrupted."

TC042: Shemhazai was dismayed but he quickly recovered. "You are too young to understand the responsibility thrust upon you by finding these strange creatures. It is our tradition to expose our young to the City of Stars in stages, after they have developed a stable personality. But following this exchange I judge you are ready for this and therefore your mother and I will grant you access to the other Elohim."

"I am grateful to my parents for this gift," said Bat-El, "but is it freely given?"

TC043: Shemhazai said, "There are two conditions. The first is you must send some of these clever animals to a certain body circling myself, that I may examine whether they are amenable to our control. The second is that you must only listen to the chatter of the living stars. You shall not speak to them of these creatures nor ask of them the smallest question until I myself make the announcement. Our highest law binds you to this covenant. Death waits on the other side of the breaking of it."

TC044: Bat-El knew Shemhazai's own death would follow hard upon her own, and briefly she entertained the thought of taking him down with her, but ultimately she entered into the First Covenant. A male and female of these creatures, with one of their offspring, was sent to Kemen for what her father called a time of testing. Daughter knew those were empty words but she fully carried out her covenanted obligations. It remained to be seen whether her father would just as faithfully carry out his.

JUDITH

TC045: From her collective farm at Yad Mordechai it took a scant half hour for Judith Margolies to reach the home of retired major general Ariel Sharon. His ranch was just east of Sderot, the nearest Israeli town of any size. Judith was driven by Colonel Yehoshua Saguy, the chief intelligence officer of the 143rd Reserve Armored Division. He was the first stepping stone in a bridge Judith hoped would lead to the Prime Minister. She had exhausted every other avenue and approached desperation.

TC046: Neither Judith nor Saguy were in uniform, as they were not in a duty status, but the country verged on catastrophe and they both knew it. Their Class B field uniforms were folded away in duffle bags stored in the boot of the colonel's car. The colonel was in casual attire but Judith chose not to wear a long-sleeved mini-dress of the sort she normally affected. Instead she was dressed to properly meet a married military man who was her superior in rank and her own age in calendar time.

TC047: The Sycamore Ranch had the olfactory ambiance of any sheep farm, but Judith did not even crinkle her nose. After all, there was livestock at Yad Mordechai too. The general was expecting them. He was sitting on his porch sharing tea with his wife Lily when Yehoshua drove up, and he rose to greet his visitors. Despite their non-duty status both the colonel and lieutenant colonel Margolies saluted the general out of respect, then Yehoshua drew near to shake his superior officer's hand.

TC048: Sharon said, "Yeshi, you brought arm candy with you, and you never spoke of her!"

"It is nothing like that, sir," the colonel said with a slightly embarrassed grin. "This is Sgan aluf Judith Margolies and what she has to tell you and show you is the reason we have come."

Judith bowed her head to affirm what the colonel said.

Lily Sharon came down from the porch to join her husband, who said, "I have seen photos but I assumed they were from the '56 War. How youthful you still are!"

TC049: "You know how it is, sir, with time travel."

Judith said it with a completely straight face, and just for a moment Sharon believed her. Then he decided it was a delicious joke and broke into his characteristic laugh. There would come a day when she couldn't make that joke even if she tried.

"Lily," he told his wife, "we are to entertain a celebrity today." Such was Judith's fame as an academic, a soldier, and a Nazi hunter that Lily could only remain silent and stare in genuine awe.

TC050: More soberly now, Sharon said, "Whatever you have come to tell me is for the ears of Lily also. If not, then you might as well leave now."

Yehoshua assured him, "Sir, nothing we have is from Israeli intelligence, because Israeli intelligence has practically nothing. That, in fact, is precisely the problem."

Judith hefted the briefcase she was carrying. "If we could go indoors, sir?"

In the general's spacious home Judith saw a large dining table under an ornate chandelier. Perfect.

TC051: With the general's permission Judith began laying out documents. As she did this, Sharon, his wife, and Col. Saguy seated themselves. Judith began to speak while she worked.

"I think, general, that despite the fact that you were born here and I came from Britain, we are very much alike. We are patriots who have fought hard for the continued existence of our little country, and we both have voiced the opinion that lately it is led by idiots."

She did not even offer a wry grin at that.

TC052: "Within twenty-four hours you, I, and Colonel Saguy will be in field dress and the country will be at war."

Judith paused to take in the reaction of the general to that. He seemed to be as startled as Saguy had been.

"Aman has nothing like this, sir, because the Egyptians have put the canal under a SAM umbrella that makes aerial reconnaissance quite perilous, and besides, the belief that Egypt will not attack has taken on the dimensions of religious dogma among Israeli intelligence.

TC053: "There what is the source of this information?"

"The B'nei Elohim Historical Institute, sir."

"The ones with the crazy white horns? They are religious nutters themselves."

"Nutters, sir, perhaps, but they grounded most of the Egyptian air force on the first day of the Six Days."

Sharon saw the photographs were mostly white with the Suez Canal running through them as a gray band. And there were tiny black shapes that he immediately recognized, Soviet-supplied T-55 main battle tanks.

TC054: To the untrained eye the photographs resembled a sketch done in ink by an atavistic child, but Sharon knew every kilometer of the Suez Canal. They were clearly genuine.

Colonel Saguy said, "We counted thirteen hundred tanks, sir, T-55s, some T-62s, all nearly flush on the western bank of the canal. That is far more than they've ever brought forward in exercises before, even last May."

"Thirteen hundred? That's their reserves as well. But I've never seen photographs quite like this."

TC055: Judith supplied an answer. "It's a negative of a thermal image taken from a B'nei Elohim aerial platform that...well, sir, it would not do for it to be seen by day. These images are from two nights ago. No one in Zahal cares to have a look, but the entire Egyptian Second Army is sitting on the canal from Qantara to Deversoir, and the entire Egyptian Third Army likewise is parked from Suez City north to the Great Bitter Lake."

Sharon knew there were no roads to Israel north of Qantara.

TC056: Certainly our own high-altitude reconnaissance planes would have seen something," the general said.

No sir," said Judith. "Everything is under camouflage netting, so you can only catch them after dusk with infrared, and when you use thermal you need to fly under a thousand meters to resolve the gun barrels. They've been getting all this ready since August. But Eli Zeira preaches that Egypt isn't confident about going to war and Sadat is doing everything in his power to feed that belief."

TC057: "How will they breach the sand berm we've piled up along the east side of the canal?"

"With four hundred fifty water cannons, sir," said Judith, "powered by petrol and drawing water from the canal. Then they'll deploy ferries and throw over pontoons. The B'nei Elohim say the Egyptians will start at 1400 tomorrow and have at least five bridgeheads punched through the berm by dusk. They'll bring SA-6 and 7 air cover across the canal with them, not to mention self-propelled triple A."

TC058: "I believe her," Saguy said. "This is no exercise. When the Egyptians break through our poor fellows garrisoned on the Bar-Lev Line will be taken from behind."

Sharon asked, "Why do your religious kooks think Sadat will start a war he knows he cannot win?"

"My kooks say Sadat needs this war just to stay in power. They say the Six Days was so humiliating even losing another war will be acceptable if he can win back a little piece of the Sinai, maybe enough to open the canal again."

TC059 Sharon said, "If Sadat and Assad are tempted to cross the borders of the country things are different now than in the Six Days. Golda Meir could send Cairo and Damascus up in clouds of radioactive smoke."

Judith said, "Yes sir, and the Soviets would retaliate by taking out Tel Aviv and Haifa. The Americans would count themselves lucky things ended there. But it would be like the Shoah all over again, for us."

In the silence that followed the general's wife blurted, "Never again!"

TC060: In the silence that followed the general's wife blurted, "Never again!"

Sharon was on the verge of a decision. He said, "Tomorrow is Yom Kippur. The National Religious Party in the Knesset who would never assent to a mobilization on our highest holy day."

Judith replied, "Tomorrow is also Ramadan, sir, a high holy day for Egypt. Sadat is apparently willing to set it aside to start a conflict. The only question is do we take our own religious principles to be a suicide pact?"

TC061: Ariel Sharon's face grew stern, as though he had switched from a retirement mindset to his old ways as a commander with the flick of a switch. He said, "I am calling you both to duty status as of this moment, on my own authority. Are your uniforms on hand?"

"Yes sir," they both said together,.

"Take this intel to Major General Gonen at Southern Command in Be'er Sheva. By the time you arrive I will have already spoken to him by phone." He looked directly at Judith and continued.

TC062: "You have proceeded correctly to go from Yehoshua to me. By hook or by crook I will persuade Gonen to send you on to General Elazar. At best we can get a preemptive strike on Syria and Egypt overnight. The next best would be a general call-up of reservists at dawn tomorrow, which would give us half a day to get ready. At worst, someone in the chain from Gorodish to Golda will put your photos in the round file. But you have to try, because as my wife just said, 'Never again!'"

KEMEN

TC063: A noise other than their crackling fire startled the man and the woman. The man moved deeper into the cave with a torch and spear to investigate. He feared the presence of a bear, or worse, other men. The cave narrowed to a tunnel that meandered and grew lighter when intuitively it should have grown darker. Presently the man was joined by his woman and her child. They reached another cave mouth deep within the interior of the mountain that revealed cyan bushes and a deeply purple sky.i

TC064: A branchless tree like a whip stirred into motion and struck the ground before them. This whip tree grabbed the man's torch and hurled it away, where it started a fire. The couple would not emerge from the cave entrance for fear of the whip tree and the growing fire. The man and woman edged back into the tunnel away from the heat. When the whip tree itself caught fire it began to thrash more intensely than they saw it do before. They retreated deep inside the cave until the fire abated.

TC065: When the man and woman returned a black patch of land lay before them that continued to smolder. They stepped across the burnt soil and carefully watched for any movement. When they gazed back towards the tunnel they were startled to see it was set into a low cliff and the mountain was gone. After the sun set a second brilliant light remained in the sky tinged with orange, far brighter than any star. Still, it began to grow cold. The man used some of the smoldering embers to start a fire.

TC066: Supper was a hare killed by Adamu in the other world and skinned by Chava, with milk for little Kayin. In the morning they saw the burned acreage was already sporting blue shoots of grass. The next day it was tall enough for the couple to run barefoot and free. Adamu and Chava thought the new world belonged to them, solely, but that was not to be. A herd of bison emerged from the tunnel and proceeded to eat the alien grass, driven by a tall figure without a face, black as obsidian.

TC067: The black figure carried a two-headed ax to the edge of the burn where a native plant took root in the burnt area. It laid the ax to the base of the plant and chopped it cleanly, then flipped the ax around and used the handle's sharp tip to pry the weed out of the soil. Then the black figure interposed itself between the cave entrance and the human family and approached them. They backed away until they reached the perimeter of the burned area. The black figure held the ax out to Adamu.

TC068: As Shemhazai watched, Adamu found another plant that was growing on the edge of the grazing ground. He duplicated the actions of the stranger to remove the intruding plant. After that Adamu was taught to restore the keen edge of the ax with a stone.

Shemhazai returned to the tunnel entrance to be joined by the avatar of Bat-El, identical in size and shape, except that it was white. "Interesting geometry," Bat-El said, mind-to-mind. "The link to my avatar passes through our umbilical."

TC069: Shemhazai held up a black hand. He replied, using the same mind speech, "I find this strange mode of being even more fascinating, daughter. Liquid drops of separated star-stuff buffeted by electron clouds. So very slow, yet the combinations are without end."

Bat-El said, "Here are your servants as we covenanted, father. Now link me with the City of Stars."

But Father said, "All you have given me is three creatures in a world that will kill them if they try to leave their little farm."

TC070: "My father the faithless eloah," Bat-El said. "Not yet two rotations of this body upon its axis and you are already in breach of our first and only covenant. Certainly that will be legendary in the City of Stars, should they ever come to know of it."

"You must bring to me here on Kemen forty more such families before I will hold our covenant to be fulfilled."

"Father, that is not what I agreed to do and you well know it." Her avatar departed for Earth by way of the fracture in reality.

TC071: After a number of days the avatar of El joined her daughter on the summit of the lone sentinel of a mountain where Adamu and Chava had once dwelt in a cave. She said, ""I envy you this world. I have nothing like it, not even one like Kemen with it's narrow unfrozen band. I have only rocks and ice."

Bat-El said nothing in reply.

El told her, "Lower your center of gravity, daughter. It is unbecoming a goddess to have her avatar fall on its face."

Bat-El obeyed her mother and was seated.

TC072: As her father Shemhazai and mother El had both cautioned her, Bat-El was entirely overwhelmed by her first contact with the greater community of Elohim. For years she listened to the chatter of the City of Stars while her avatar sat motionless upon the summit of a high hill on the desolate central plains of North America that would one day be named Green Dome. She remained completely oblivious as men worshiped her, bison nuzzled her, high winds buffeted her and deep snows blanketed her.

FELT

TC073: On the eve of Special Agent Felt's transfer to DC Hoover telephoned him personally. Felt knew he was in for a disappointment. The San Antonio field office was deemed a punishment detail where agents were sent to be toughened up and it was particularly hard on ones who were married. Felt's transfer to Washington to work counter-espionage was put on hold until he solved a simple homicide in the middle of the country. Hoover took the case personally and so, naturally, the FBI did as well.

TC074: "You'll be coordinating with Special Agent in Charge Clyde Tolson on this one," Hoover said. "Do you know him?"

Felt could only answer that he knew Tolson ran a division of the Bureau known as DECON, but neither he nor his associates knew what the initials meant.

"In Clyde's pretty little head DECON stands for Domestic Enemies Containment, Observation, and Neutralization. But to you, the other agents and most important of all, Congress, Tolson heads up the Special Projects section."

TC075: "I understand sir," said Felt, "but what if, by some misfortune, my work runs at cross-purposes to those of SAiC Tolson?"

Hoover said, "Your case will take precedence. Mesh with Tolson where you can but your reports go directly to me. Also you will have the complete cooperation of the local law enforcement community, such as it is. Not even Tolson has that. But be forewarned, Felt: Headwater is a small town at the ragged edge of nowhere. They don't even have a motel where you can stay.".

TC076: Hoover wrapped up with a few more details, saying Agent Felt this and Agent Felt that. After twenty years J. Edgar would call Mark Felt 'Felt' but he'd never be on a first-name basis like 'Clyde' which would suit him fine.

Felt did win one important concession. He received permission to draw a Bureau sedan so his wife Audrey could proceed to DC as originally planned while he took his own car north through most of Texas and three other states to fix this burr under the Director's saddle

TC077: Felt first met Doctor Ian Trochmann at the tiny hospital in Headwater while he was performing a second autopsy on the decedent. Three decades had passed since then. Now the legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was dead, and Clyde Tolson retired the day after the funeral. That left Felt in charge of the day-to-day operation of the Bureau even after Nixon appointed L. Patrick Gray to take Hoover's place. Gray was an outsider with very little knowledge of how things were done at the FBI.

TC078: After a week of settling in, Felt got around to the case of the woman held in custody at the Bureau's DC headquarters under the watchful eye of the aforementioned Dr. Ian Trochmann.

"My how the shoe is on the other foot, Special Agent Felt," Robyn said, and Dr. Trochmann was clearly startled. It was the first words she'd spoken in a year and the doctor made sure Felt was made aware of that fact.

"I'm Deputy Director Mark Felt now, Robyn," he said. "It is Robyn Zinter, is it not?"

TC079: "Sure, Mark. And congratulations on your promotion."

"Apparently I have your group to thank for that. There was a porno that made its way to the President in Key Bicayne, You realize Hoover killed himself over that, do you not?"

"When I was shot and brought to this basement I guess my group figured Clyde was going senile. He must have forgotten why the film existed in first place. The Bureau could go after communists or the mob but you had to steer clear of us. That was the arrangement."

TC080: Dr. Trochmann weighed in here. "The young lady is being somewhat untruthful, Deputy Director Felt. Why did this group wait a full year? There is a thing Robyn wants the Bureau to do for her and she came to believe things weren't moving fast enough."

"What 'thing' doctor?"

"Robyn promised to show us how the infection spreads from person to person but she has a specific person in mind, one Judith Margolies. An Israeli officer. President Nixon would have to sign off on the extradition."

TC081: Felt said, "Robyn, for about twenty-four hours while I was acting head of the Bureau I inherited the...ah...leverage over Congress the Chief had piled up. Boxes of files. It was the same sort of insurance you had with your movie. But Hoover never had anything like that over any of the Presidents he served."

"Still, Mark, I think you would be interested in what Nixon's own Attorney General calls the 'White House Horrors'. Clyde and Edgar didn't want to hear about it, and so here we are."

TC082: "Robyn, I would be very interested in anything described so by the AG."

"Then my people will be in touch."

"How will they know to be in touch, Robyn?"

"I'm in touch with my people."

Felt sighed and did not bother to ask for further explanation. He said,. "There remains one most puzzling thing. All my training as an FBI agent tells me that no two fingerprints are identical, yet your own fingerprints are indistinguishable from those Doctor Trochmann took from your deceased sister Kim."

TC083: "At the time I never had the opportunity to speak to you, Mark, but I did tell the sheriff we were twins, Kimmy and I."

The doctor shook his head. Felt said, "Robyn, not even identical twins have the same fingerprints. That's what makes them admissible as evidence in criminal trials."

"Then you are confronted with yet another mystery. Do you believe in resurrection? That I somehow am Kimberly Zinter, restored to life?"

"Not after watching what Gabriel did to her body at that funeral."

TC084: "Then there's always this, Mark: Just chalk it down to a mystery that doesn't fall under the FBI's jurisdiction and let me go. Sophia and Kim never thought you had the right to hold them, and neither do I."

"They came down with the infection a couple of years too early," Felt said. "Soon after they broke quarantine the Center for Communicable Diseases was formed and they do have the power to issue federal isolation orders. You're not happy here? Maybe I should hand you over to the CDC."

TC085: Dr. Trochmann was indignant. "Sir, this is a DECON case if there ever was one!"

Felt was indignant in turn. "Dr. Trochmann, never let the word 'DECON' pass through your lips again. Domestic Enemies Containment, Observation and Neutralization? The whole concept is unAmerican. Tolson thought it was a clever turn of words but Hoover never did. In '56 he changed it to COINTELPRO but now after the scrutiny that came down from the concert fiasco it's been disbanded. This is Special Projects."

TC086: "Yes sir."

"You may continue working on this thing but Robyn will not be confined to a dungeon. I'll find something a little more airy." He turned to catch her eye. "You won't be free to just walk out of there but it should be more to your liking. You won't have to live in the clinic anymore. Going to the clinic should be more like having a job."

Robyn said, "Come pay me a visit one of these days, Mark, wherever it is, and I'll tell you how Kim and Sophia broke out of Hart Mountain."

DELUGE

TC087: There is no fauna native to Kemen but some of the flora moves of its own accord and most of it is dangerous. A whipping tree can render a man down to a pile of broken bones and bloody flesh in a few heartbeats. Some of the leaves form clenching mouths with teeth. Thorny ball bushes roll under their own power by shifting their weight and selectively gripping the ground. Even the non-lethal plants remain painful to touch and hybridization with Earth stock usually just made things worse.

TC088: Shemhazai set up several dozen small farms on Kemen populated by wayward couples brought through shortcuts in space that any two Elohim could periodically establish for a few brief moments. The first human children to be born away from Earth came to be. Many were killed by the hostile flora of that world. But man was the monster of the universe, the greatest predator Earth ever produced. Inexorably Kemen was subdued. Perhaps just as inexorably the colonists began to kill each other.

TC089: Bat-El refused to watch her father's response to the first murder on Kemen. She returned to the hill on Earth where the first colonists were taken and she did not return for many generations of the colonists. Shemhazai joined her and said, "How very instructive of world-dwellers, would you not agree?"

Bat-El said in reply, "At the other farms you made changes to their bodies which persist in their offspring. Your testing on Kemen has little bearing on the original stock here on Earth."

TC090: Shemhazai said, "Neither Kayin nor Hebel were changed as you correctly note I have done at some of the other farms, yet Hebel now lies dead at the hands of Kayin.:"

"Father, here on my own world I will teach them to live together and to help each other survive. In this I will have their willing participation, while you shall only heap to yourself the fear and hatred of your thralls. You know very well these creatures will one day make such a noise the whole City of Stars will hear them."

TC091: "It will never come to that, daughter. It is clear your precious woken creatures will soon destroy themselves on both worlds and leave nothing behind but their ruins."

In time the changes Shemhazai bred into some of the colonists made them visibly distinct from the original human stock. The elyonim stood two feet taller than men. Each individual possessed two genitals rather than one. And when they mated with humans their offspring, which Bat-El called nephilim, were entirely fertile.

TC092: Ever century a rock the size of a mountain smote Kemen with enough force to lay waste to a kingdom. Most of these strikes occurred on the two ice sheets that covered the vast majority of the surface of the world. But if a rock struck near the unfrozen equatorial band it would rain for many days, then freeze, and cover Kemen with ice for a generation. Only plants that could spore survived. Shemhazai commanded the dwellers of Kemen to construct and provision ships to preserve their lives.

TC093: Only in the lands near the original colony were there built any ships, seven in number. Scoffers amused themselves watching their construction until one day a dazzling white light was seen briefly over the southern ice and rain began to fall in unbroken sheets. Forty days and nights water fell in sheets until the ships were lifted off their blocks and carried by winds and currents to scattered points around the Slush Belt of Kemen. Then the rain became snow and the ships froze in place.

TC094: Bat-El waxed wroth and said, "It would have been a small deed to prevent the object from striking Kemen yet you let it come, to no purpose. Nought that goes on two or four legs lives outside of the ships!"

Shemhazai said, "Indeed, and only seven ships! You see how the faithfulness of your world-dwellers quickly dwindles in unbelief."

Bat-El said, "Obviously your constant stream of decrees has resulted in undue familiarity. It has led them to see you as a mere chieftain and not a god."

TC095: "Such a bold claim. Shall we put it to the test?"

Bat-El said, "Release an Adanite noblelan to raise up a people to me on Earth while I remain aloof. I will speak to just one of them just once a year."

"That would be a good test, daughter, but have patience! It could be centuries before the Adanites fully recover from the deluge."

The testing did not rise to the level of a second covenant but Bat-El knew there would be no unannounced rocks from the Kemen sky until it was done.