Divine Deception: The Will Traveller Chronicals (7 page)

Poor Susan was in
shock, as were many of the young ladies and even one or two of the
men. Seeing ‘Gods’ die. Me and my laser bouncing trick, and with
their world crumbling around them, who could blame them? Zoran had
our ‘escort’ lock up the T.T.V. garage crew, to prevent them
sounding any alarm, and all seemed quiet, as we left via a back
passage way, normally used to take the garbage out. The two buggies
and four air bikes which stood out on the Red House’s front
courtyard, gave the appearance that I still had visitors, and
guards. With the men well laden, the women much less so, and Zoran
and I carrying nothing, because ‘It would not be right’, we made
our way quietly around behind the blue house, then up through the
well vegetated forest floor.

Soon our little
party of ‘escapees’ reached a very well hidden cave entrance. Once
the cobwebs were cleared away, we entered and, almost immediately,
came out the other side. There, in a small clearing, our two space
craft looking T.T.V’s gleamed in the moonlight, waiting for us.

“So you don’t have
much recall from before you left Sire?” Zoran asked, as we sat in
our now still and silent T.T.V.

“Virtually none at
all Zoran, what I know I’ve learned since I returned” I answered.
We had left the outside of the Supreme House’s crater and, at the
request of young Jarrat and Rachael, as conveyed via Zoran, had
flown over to Willow Vale, where their parents, and all the other
Supreme House’s retired staff lived, in a ‘resort-like retirement
village’ founded by the first Supreme One’s wife. But we had
arrived after midnight, so we had parked quietly, beneath some tall
trees, and all the Red House staff, as well as the two, three man
crews of the T.T.V’s, were getting some sleep.

We had a momentary
scare when the T.T.V radio chief ordered our two crew to return to
base, until I pointed out that, if they tried to, I’d have to kill
them. That pretty much settled the matter. Now, I was trying to
work out what came next, by getting some facts from this wise and
loyal old man. Zoran had explained that most people born in the
Supreme House’s civilian community, which numbered over a thousand
souls, went into House service, after their twelve years of
schooling. The brightest ones go up to Admin House, where the
Patriarch’s views on world issues are formulated. The rest go into
production, which involved farming, making soft goods and clothes
and light manufacturing. Only one in five of the women were allowed
to remain fertile.

“That’s better
than the New World Lord Robert” The old man replied to my negative
response “It’s usually less than one in eight” He told me.

“In Centropolis,
it’s currently one in ten” Susan Proust, whose lovely head lay on
my lap said, with sadness in her soft voice.

“How do they
decide?” I asked her.

“It’s a lottery,
but isn’t all of life?” She asked resignedly. Through these two, I
had now acquired a fairly clear picture of the world I was in. But
there were so many occasions when one of them surprised the other,
with facts and information that was totally contradictory to what
they’d believed all their lives, that I doubted if anyone actually
knew the whole truth.

Already
disillusioned with her long-revered Supreme Family, Susan was still
frequently shocked at what Zoran had to tell me about this
inexorably devolving and often thoroughly disgusting family of
mine. It had started out as a way of preventing the omni powerful
junior members of the Supreme Family from going overboard on their
own ‘Godliness’, in effect, a strict code of obedience to the
Supreme One. But it had degenerated into the utterly immoral old
man acquiring sexual control of his family. Incest was now the
norm, along with an excessive use of a wide variety of ‘mind
expanding’ drugs. That explained the ever calm Lord Peter. Zoran
was saddened to hear from Susan that, out in Centropolis and ‘most
likely in the rest of the New World’, the original concept of
government by meritocracy had slid back into a world of nepotism
and bureaucratic fiefdoms.

Zoran had served
at Admin, then retired ‘Back to Red House’.

“I specifically
requested to be returned to Red House, from out here, just after
you left Lord Robert” Zoran had an odd expression on his face.
Obviously I was supposed to ask

“The prediction?
You knew all about it?”.

“I have known
since you were a very naughty young man Sire” The old man’s voice
confirmed what I’d figured out. He had come back to ‘wait on and
guide’ me in the performance of my mission.

“May I be allowed
to know Robert?” Only Susan had been able to accommodate my request
to be called just that, by everyone else. I nodded and Zoran told
her all about the mysterious appearing and disappearing old woman
and her predictions.

“As to exactly how
I’m supposed to accomplish this mission” I cut in, when he had
finished “Well, I haven’t figured that part out yet” I told her,
then turned to ask Zoran how many of these T.T.V’s the Supreme
Family had all told. The old man thought a moment.

“Just twelve full
combat units, including these two” Zoran estimated “And another six
or so older models, used only for personnel and goods” The old man
added. Although the total number of combat ready troops numbered
just three hundred, including the eighty T.T.V. crew members, the
location and the defence technology of the Supreme House, made it
totally invincible to any currently existing force outside of
it.

Not that there was
very much force outside the Supreme House. The dozen or so city
states that made up the New World had conventionally armed foot and
air cycle police. Between them, they had six conventional T.T.V’s,
which were unarmed, along with a relatively static defence
military, whose main function was to effectively created a thin,
but quite impenetrable defence perimeter, around each of the city
states’ borders. Much as they might want to, the people who lived
in this world’s ‘uninhabited wilds’, with nothing but hand made
tools and weapons, could not even make their existence known to the
totally insulated city state dwellers. Zoran had been told about
them by my equally wayward siblings and I, on our return from our
‘hunter gatherers trips’.

“All these folks
do is hunt, copulate and fight off animals” We had told him. When
they weren’t defending their very existence from my Brothers and I
that is. Willow Vale wasn’t quite the way it was presented,
according to Zoran, who, after eight years there, had reached the
‘leadership committee’ who decided on whether to “Play tennis,
bridge, bowls or some other intrepid activity” Zoran snickered,
with a note of distaste “You have no idea how nasty people can get,
when they get old Sire” Zoran told me. We were all soon to find out
how true that was for ourselves. The Supreme One was supremely old,
and supremely nasty! The odd thing was, Zoran’s Son and Daughter
lived there now, their kids now worked in house service, but not in
mine.

Our twenty eight
sleeping Red House staff and the six T.T.V crew, all had their
folks living out here. Zoran and Susan drifted off to sleep
eventually, while I lay back comfortably and considered the task
ahead. One thing was sure; defeating that citadel of power would
take a lot of intimate knowledge. That was information which I
looked forward to getting, from the fifty or so folk who had spent
their working lives in there. As dawn’s first light glowed in
through the cabin’s windows, I got up and entered the control
cockpit, closing the door quietly behind me. Willowvale was still
very much asleep, only a wisp or two of smoke came from a couple of
the many chimneys. We were parked just two hundred metres outside
the drawbridge that led into Red Willowvale.

I saw the door of
the other T.T.V open and four or five young men spill out, as,
behind me, I heard other excited youngsters. Opening both the
pilot’s window and the control cabin door, I yelled

“Off you go, tell
them I’d like a chat before we go” And away they went, Zoran and
the six crewmen awaited me when I got back into the main cabin “I
do believe with these I can protect our ships gentlemen” I told
them, as I brandished my two laser ray devices. The crewmen, in
their thirties and forties, thanked me and withdrew, anxious to see
their loved ones.

“You should go see
your kids shouldn’t you?” I asked Zoran.

“No Sire, I’ll let
them come to me” He replied smiling.

Susan and I
watched the old man pacing back and forth, in front of our T.T.V.
We sat up in the four-seater, VIP cabin. There was seating for
eight on either side below us and, of course, the three-crew cabin
in front of us. The first thing we heard was gunfire! Pistols, then
sub-machine gun fire. Then, the first of our staff, mostly girls,
came screaming across the bridge and towards us, behind them, our
crews and the armed household staff, were firing into the walled
and moated village as they retreated. Most of the girls were almost
to our T.T.V’s when five T.T.V’s, from the Supreme House, lifted
vertically, from behind the other side of the eight sectioned
community. All five began spraying machine gun fire at our fleeing
and essentially defenceless young people.

Two missiles hit
our other T.T.V and something clicked on in me. I rose and walked
quickly to our T.T.V’s still open door

“Zoran, get
inside” I ordered and raised my arms. The two tiny laser rays shot
out from my outstretched hands and connected with the front two
T.T.V’s. They immediately ceased firing, glowed an increasingly
deeper red and, in a few seconds, imploded into grey clouds, that
showered black rain onto the ground below. The other three T.T.Vs
quickly spun around, dropped low and took off across the treetops
at full speed. Zoran and Susan ran down to help the injured, I
stayed at the top of our T.T.V’s entry gantry, making sure our
unwanted guests didn’t return. The grief on the faces of every one
of them spoke of something beyond the ambush, though that was bad
enough.

We’d lost six
lives, one a crew member, and had eight more badly injured, and,
one of our two T.T.V’s was, at the very least, damaged. But all
that paled into in significance, when the true horror of this day’s
doings was unveiled. Everyone in Red Willow Vale had been murdered!
Along with the parents of my six crew members. Our people had
caught them by surprise, but not in time. I left Susan in charge of
our well supplied triage and Zoran, with his laser weapon, along
with the six uninjured young women behind. Then with the five
crewmen and eight newly christened guardsmen, I cautiously
approached the damaged drawbridge, even though all was quiet. When
we entered Red Willowvale, we found six of the Supreme Household
Guards. Four dead and two left for dead when they were injured.

Before long,
crowds of people had begun to mass around the bridge-ways to the
other seven, water surrounded sections of Willow Vale. My thirteen
man, heavily armed troop was enough to keep the restive crowd
peaceful at least. I climbed the steps of a raised Dias, in the
centre of Red Willowvale, so that I could be seen by everyone over
the heads of my ‘house guard’. As soon as I raised my hands, the
multi coloured sections fell absolutely quiet. Once again, my
automatic voice seemed amplified, even though I spoke as if talking
to a room full of people.

“You all know who
I am” I began “You who have so loyally and unswervingly served the
houses of the Supreme One and his family” I began my ‘automatic’
address

“Yet today, you
see the terrible reward for that service. All forty six of your
life long neighbours, in Red Willowvale, have been executed,
because their offspring chose to stand with me” There was a shocked
gasp, I saw some older men, around Zoran’s age, trying to push
their way to the front of their groups, but I continued “I know
that you believe in the Divine right of the Supreme Family, but I’m
telling you it’s a myth” That brought several outcries of protest.
But I forged on “I have eight men in front of you that actually
watched Lady Margaret kill Lord Peter” I told them, adding “Then
she herself was killed, by falling debris”. There was a spontaneous
wail of grief, from both the green and yellow sections of Willow
Vale.

“That’s why I’m
going to leave one vehicle and some guards here” I told them “To
defend those two groups and the rest of you in the event of another
attack by the Supreme Family”

“We don’t want
your protection Lord Robert” The voice came from a tall thin old
man with a green bow tie “You should keep your family squabbles
inside your own home, not fight your battles out here, using us as
shields” He added, expecting imminent death.

Perhaps emboldened
by my failure to punish the first man, another man, solid and short
and no more than fifty, crossed the bridge from Yellow Willow Vale
and called out.

“If you leave your
people here, the rest of us will become targets” He yelled at me
“Why don’t you just go, we all know what you people really are” He
added knowingly smug.

Still no response
from me, though my thirteen men were getting edgy. Suddenly one of
my own crew men spun around, aimed his machine gun point blank and
fired, while he began screaming

“My folks are dead
because of you, you’re not…” He stopped firing and his voice
trailed off, because the bullets had dropped off me, I was
completely unharmed. Two of his colleagues pointed their guns at
his head, he was already dead in his own mind. I motioned them to
stop

“There will be no
more killing in my name” I decreed “You of Willow Vale have my
personal protection. I will see to it that my family does you no
harm out here” I told the almost entirely stunned crowd.

However, it seems
the burly chap who had been so disrespectful a moment ago, was
quite sure that was some kind of pre-arranged trick. He managed to
burst past my still confused guards, draw a large pistol from under
his shirt and shoot while yelling