The First Love Of Alipang Havens

That night, Lorraine sat up in her bed and whispered into the darkness:

"God, You know I've been careful to avoid letting Wilson take Your place in my emotions since You called him home. He was the agent of Your grace for me, but of course the grace is still Yours. I ask You not to take offense if I do speak directly to him for awhile. Please, Lord, open the comms link; no, I don't expect him to be allowed to answer me, but I want to have spoken to him.

"Wilson, darling, and Quinn if you're listening, I love you. I'll always love you, always, every minute. But Quinn, at least I do have one son remaining on Earth. I don't have any kind of _husband_ on Earth. Wilson, if you've been watching, or even just receiving some kind of situation briefings from my guardian angel, you know that I never made any effort to _find_ a new man to love. Even though you told me before they dragged you away on their lying fake charges that if you died you would want me to go on with my life, I felt no need. It wasn't that I felt marrying again would be cheating on you; I had already been forgiven for _actual_ cheating, and I knew the difference.

"Of course, there's no dating scene here in the Enclave so far, no nightclubs, hardly even many barn dances. We haven't been stuck in an artificial nineteenth century long enough yet for frontier social life to make its comeback. Between that, and my not being young anymore, it's been easy for me to focus my attention on Ransom and the Havens children. Then again, children themselves have a stake in the presence or absence of a father figure.

"It would be good for Ransom to have a Godly stepfather. Alipang does his best to be a role model for all the boys, and he IS a great role model, but he can't _belong_ to Ransom individually the way a good stepfather could. So that's an argument in favor of my marrying, if I can have a good man. But what are my own feelings, in view of how this affects me? I've been thinking about it a lot.

"Even now, I can't say that I strictly _need_ to have a new husband; but I know it's no sin for me to have one. And now, without any effort on my part, a decent man has actually come _specifically_ for the premeditated purpose of meeting me. It was a fine get-acquainted time; Bill told Al and Kim and me all about his salvation testimony and his walk with Jesus. And Wilson, he didn't flinch when I told him, near the end of the visit, how terribly I had wronged you. Bill knows the difference between excusing an unrepented sin, and accepting forgiveness for a sin you renounce. He sees me as cleansed by the Blood of Jesus!

"What's more, he doesn't mind my being older than he is. He seems really to mean what most people say and _don't_ mean: that what's inside people is what matters. If I don't flatter myself too much, I half-believe that he already has formed an intention of marrying me. But he has the brains not to rush things. No doubt he's praying hard about this. It must have crossed his mind that there's an emotional inequality between him and me, with me having a first husband to remember while he has no previous wife to remember. The Holy Spirit could enable him and me to cope with that issue, but it _would_ have to be faced.

"I believe this can work. I believe that Bill and I can be partners in service to Christ and to our loved ones--I guess that comes to MY loved ones becoming his loved ones also. But I'll wait for God to drop some hint of His will.

"Wilson, you're my first and greatest love. No one can take away what you were to me. If not for you and Quinn praying for me, I might have been eternally lost, _probably_ would have been. But I know, I know it from your own mouth on the last day I ever saw you, that I have your permission to marry again. So please pray for me, that the Spirit will guide me now, that my feelings will be brought into obedience to God. I wish I could expect that I would have a vision of you directly telling me what God's will is; but that kind of thing is mostly in movies...."

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

At once whole universes away, and less than a meter away, Wilson and Quinn Kramer were in fact witnessing Lorraine's soul-baring. Wilson turned to address God: "How about it, Lord? Are You planning to let me appear to her?"

"No, son," the Almighty replied. "Those occurrences have to remain the exception, lest mortals grow even more inclined than they already are to consult the dead _instead_ of consulting Me. But I promise you, I _shall_ make My will known to her in a way more than sufficiently clear and unmistakable. Remember, son, I love her too."
 
The Amish have a custom of only holding church every other Sunday. Their way of life being so labor-intensive, the "off-Sundays" give them a little more breathing space.

By the off-Sunday after Bill Shao's visit to Sussex, the breaking up of fallow land had spread to the Amish region where the Reinharts lived, giving all these farmers a little extra head start toward next spring's planting. Between this, and Ulrich Reinhart being almost completely recovered from his bear mauling, the Amish families felt at ease. The eldest son of one local family had even written a short article for the Wyoming Observer on the current state of agriculture in the area.

Today, there was a voluntary gathering at the Crazy Woman Creek Grange Hall for which Alipang Havens volunteered. Alipang's friend John, and his wife Lynne, were heading meetings with the Amish men and women respectively. This is part of what John Wisebadger said to the men:

"I know that it's greatly oversimplified when 'English' people say that you Amish are distinguished by not liking technology. I know that the Amish originated in Germany, at a time when German industrial progress was coinciding with a harsh authoritarian attitude in the secular government. You were more concerned NOT to identify with a social system hostile to your understanding of God's Word, than to be at a particular level of technology.

"When Amish men wear beards but keep their upper lips free of moustaches, this is not any LESS modern than the prevailing style for men was in Germany in a past generation--just intentionally different. German men in the days of the Kaiser tended to have moustaches but shave their chins, so you did the opposite. Well, in the present generation, you don't even need to maintain one certain grooming custom to be set apart from the God-hating outside world; that world has GIVEN an obvious distinction to ALL of us in the Enclave--it put all of us in the Enclave!"

And this is part of what Lynne Wisebadger said to the women:

"You sisters have lived here in Wyoming long enough by now to realize that the difference between an 'English' Christian like me, and Amish persons like you, is almost no difference at all, compared to the difference between ANY believer in Christ, and any unbeliever picked off the streets at random in the cities outside the Enclave.

"If God intends for the world as we know it to continue long enough that childbearing will even matter, your sons and daughters who are now in their adolescence--what you call the rumschpringe--are going to need wives and husbands. My husband's Grange work has given him access to some of the Overseers' demographic information. Between this and his extensive travel within the Enclave, I can say with confidence that among all Amish families currently settled in Wyoming, there are only SIX surnames to be found. It may not seem obvious when your exile has only spanned a few years from its beginning, but your rising generation is going to run out of peers who are NOT their own first cousins."

The Wisebadgers were cajoling the Amish to consider easing their dogmatic restrictions on intermarriage with non-Amish persons. With such a liberalization would come the further benefit that Amish schooling could be merged with the scattered schooling efforts of the other Christians in the Enclave.

As recently as a decade ago, no Amish congregation would have let itself be advised in such a fashion by outsiders. But here and now, these Amish were keenly aware that the outsiders talking with them were literally fellow insiders.
 
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Alternate Version of Summary

This time I'm taking a different approach: characters rather than events. What follows is a listing of most of my added characters, that is those who were not in the first Alipang Havens novel.


Inside the Enclave:

Abraham Zondei, Peter Ionesco -- Christian pastors.

Bill Shao, Aretha Shabazz -- electrical power station technicians, of whom the first becomes romantically attracted to the widowed Lorraine Kramer.

Kasim Rasulala, Tuck Faraday, Dana Pickering -- Overseers for the dictatorship, of whom the last becomes inappropriately attracted to the still-married Alipang Havens.

Wilson, Esperanza and Brendan Havens -- Alipang's children by Kim.

Henry Spafford, John Wisebadger, Lynne Wisebadger -- two men who serve with Alipang as Grange Association volunteers, plus the wife of the second man.

Ulrich and Greta Reinhart (w/children) -- a prominent farming couple in the Enclave's Amish community.

Irina Stepanova, Reuben Torvill -- two of the few physicians for exiles in Wyoming.

John and Felicity Waddell -- friends of Eric and Cecilia Havens in Casper, Wyoming.

Raoul and Annette Rochefort (w/children) -- friends of Alipang and Kim in Sussex, Wyoming; he is a handyman.

Miguel and Tilly De Soto -- creators of the first independent newspaper among the exiles.

Rudolfo and Valeria Montefiori (w/children) -- a farming family active in supporting the newspaper.

Jillian Forrester -- a teenage girl with a crush on Alipang's kid brother Terrance.

Oscar and Rita Magpatoc (w/children) -- fellow Filipinos Alipang found and befriended east of his town; Mr. Magpatoc manages his town's waste treatment plant.

Sarbar and Dalbir Pitafi -- a couple who work within the Enclave as representatives of the regime's "Consumer Merchandise Service."


Outside the Enclave:

Emilio Vasquez -- a Texas Ranger, married to Alipang's sister Melody.

Cecilia, Tommy and Irene Salisbury -- children of Chilena and Dan.

Jessica Trevette -- the first President of the Diversity States of America.

Samantha and Daffodil Ford -- a diplomat for the Diversity States, and her fatherless and neglected teenage son.

Carlota Ruiz, Nalani Hahona, Cassandra Jefferson -- successive assistants to Samantha Ford in her diplomatic work, the first of these now being America's Ambassador to the United Nations (which is now headquartered in Beijing).

Thundercrash Bellingham -- a girl Daffodil is attracted to at his school (a school where he, being very smart, is already an assistant teacher).

Wilma Culligan -- a teacher at Fidel Castro Elementary School.

Butterfly Gambino -- a troublemaking boy at Leon Trotsky Middle School.

Wayne Schell -- one of the token Christian ministers allowed to operate outside the Enclave; he is pastor to Dan and Chilena.

Bert Randall -- an adventurous Australian scholar and diplomatic messenger.

Yang Sung-Kuo -- a Chinese internal-affairs officer, assigned to an external mission because (among other things) he is fluent in English.
 
There are several elements in my plot coming up, all of which will have to appear eventually, but whose order of appearance is negotiable. I have to show:

1) Some stuff with Dan and Chilena in their career, trying to maintain their faith without getting arrested.

2) Summer and Evan from the previous novel turning up in the sequel at last.

3) Bert Randall and Yang Sung-Kuo beginning their adventure together.

4) Miguel De Soto, the exile newspaperman, facing impending death by cancer.

5) Daffodil Ford being increasingly affected by the frustrations of his life.

6) Alipang and Henry getting clues to what the chemical was at the plane crash.

7) Brendan Hyland returning to America for the first time since the dictatorship took over.

Any preference for which comes next?
 
Copperfox said:
"No. And we haven't yet written an engagement notice for the newspaper. But Lorraine, I hope you'll give Bill a chance. No new man can ever be Wilson; but remember what Eric used to say about The Lord of the Rings: 'You don't blame Faramir for not being Aragorn.' Harmony says Bill isn't taking anything for granted, but he really hopes that you'll like him."

"Okay, Cecilia, I'll give this electrical engineer a chance to prove he's Faramir. As I recall, Faramir didn't expect Eowyn to fall into his arms immediately."

"No, he didn't. But once she _did_ fall into his arms, everyone in Minas Tirith cheered for them."
Click to expand...

Loving Lord of the Rings the way I do, I really like that analogy.

Copperfox said:
Then she called her son, waking him up in fact; she had a sudden urge to find out if Daffodil really disliked Nalani. If he did, Samantha had never suspected it. After all, in Samantha's mind, her son could not possibly resent anyone whose company Samantha enjoyed.

As it turned out, the teenager did seem pleased that Nalani had jumped ship. Samantha was uncertain whether perceiving those signs was the reason why she then refused her son's request to be allowed to fly out and see some of China with her before she started for home.
Click to expand...

Copperfox said:
Ambassador-At-Large Ford had not told her son about the sudden quitting of her assistant Nalani Hahona; but this change of jobs not being classified information, Daffodil had found it out himself by online means. This looked like the ideal time for Daffodil to remind his mother that she had a son, and to be of some use to her for once, by commiserating with her for the desertion of someone dear to her--though the boy considered it good riddance.
Click to expand...

Those two things don't seem to mesh. Am I missing something?

Copperfox said:
There are several elements in my plot coming up, all of which will have to appear eventually, but whose order of appearance is negotiable. I have to show:

1) Some stuff with Dan and Chilena in their career, trying to maintain their faith without getting arrested.

2) Summer and Evan from the previous novel turning up in the sequel at last.

3) Bert Randall and Yang Sung-Kuo beginning their adventure together.

4) Miguel De Soto, the exile newspaperman, facing impending death by cancer.

5) Daffodil Ford being increasingly affected by the frustrations of his life.

6) Alipang and Henry getting clues to what the chemical was at the plane crash.

7) Brendan Hyland returning to America for the first time since the dictatorship took over.

Any preference for which comes next?
Click to expand...

Hmm... How about number 2?
 
Zella, you caught a genuine blooper in the matter of Daffodil knowing about Nalani. This is simply a case of my having so little spare time, that I can't always review past writing enough to maintain consistency. Thus you have genuinely helped me. Now I can go back and correct the error. Bless you!
 
Chapter 18: The Doorways of August

Tilly De Soto had relatives in a settlement close to the east edge of the Nebraska Sector of the Western Enclave. This enabled Miguel to leave her to visit with them for part of their trip into Nebraska in early August. Besides the relatives, there were two ostensible and legitimate reasons for this trip. One was to gather information for articles about Nebraska to go into the Wyoming Observer. The other was for Miguel to purchase a hunting weapon that the Overseers allowed exiles to have: a heavy crossbow, the type requiring a pulley.

On an evening while they were still in Nebraska, the aging Cuban-American contrived to ride a borrowed horse to a place not far from the border fence. He chose a time just after sunset, and an area where trees came as close to the fence and its minefields as anywhere he knew of.

Most of the territory that now made up the dissenters' reservation had historically NOT had very many trees. But the same Greater Chinese regime that had pressed its Fairness Party puppets to create the Western Enclave instead of just killing off all dissenters, had also given the exiles the gift of enlarged woodlands. This had been made possible by Chinese experiments in genetically modifying trees: a line of research more beneficial in its results than the genetic modifying of food crops had proven to be. China had needed to reforest its own land, and had wanted mutated tree types which could live with less water than the original species had needed. Various trial mutations had been planted all over the Western Enclave as a test; the most successful types had then gone into mass planting in Greater China. The trial trees planted in America had stayed where they were, giving the exile population more wood for building and burning than would otherwise have been there for them. On average, the new trees didn't grow as tall as non-modified trees, in order not to strain the process of transpiration in a tree which wasn't pulling as much water out of the soil; but they grew very quickly. Many had risen to a climbable size in just the time since the Enclave's founding.

The tree Miguel chose to scale was barely seven meters tall, but this was high enough for his purpose. It cost the cancer-stricken old patriot great effort and pain to climb to a good perch with his crossbow and its bolts; but his will drove him on. This would be one more beaming of his flashlight into the darkness, before the light of earthly life was extinguished. His perch still had enough leaves above it that his actions would be obscured from the satellites...and unless the monitors were watching their screens _very_ closely, they would not notice the slim arrows flying over the fence. By the same token, the motion detectors along the boundary were meant to detect persons on the ground, not to notice objects flying higher than five meters _above_ the fence.

Cranking up the crossbow, Miguel sent his first arrow flying....outward, outward, where no exile was likely to set foot ever again. Wrapped around the arrow was a handwritten message on paper, like a message in a bottle. It went far enough that Miguel was confident it had gotten beyond the outermost perimeter. Thus, a passerby might see it and pick it up without being in violation of any law.

No one seemed to be coming to interfere. Miguel cranked up the crossbow again, and sent another epistle to the stupid outside population flying at a different azimuth. One more after that, and he descended the tree.

Mounting the horse once more, he rode to another location, where he got off another four message-arrows. He mustn't expend all of his bolts, or his story of target practice would wear thin. Miguel was, as he himself had predicted, growing "weak" enough to listen to the Christian witness of Doctor Torvill; so he ventured to hope that God would let at least one of the arrows be found by someone outside whose finding it would do some good.

If his rebellious messages came to the attention of the Campaign Against Hate, a brainwave test would clear Tilly, proving that she had known nothing about his plans. As for Miguel himself, what could the government do to him--refuse him effective treatment for his Adenoid-Cystic Carcinoma?

Riding back to town, Miguel decided he would stop trying to conceal his physical weakness from Tilly. He could, in fact, say truthfully that he had felt drained after using his crossbow; then he could arrange for Doctor Torvill to check on him as if because of this, and the inevitable revelation of the cancer could be pulled off without Tilly ever knowing that he had been withholding the facts from her.

Only after deciding this did Miguel suddenly realize that he had not given thought to Tilly's own _spiritual_ well-being. But there was Eric Havens; he and his wife would be there for Tilly when Miguel was gone, and they would feed her all the divine grace she could absorb.
 
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A short distance west of the Missouri River, hence inside the Great Plains Federal District, the Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary still stood. Only, now it was the Leavenworth Self-Esteem Center; and since there no longer was any United States Army to run it, it was run by the Campaign Against Hate. Murderers and all manner of predatory criminals were treated like honored guests here, as long as they knew to say what their therapists wanted to hear. Although there was forced labor, the only way to get treated really harshly in Leavenworth was to show that you had a mind of your own.

The front of the compound resembles a capitol building. On this morning in August, the doors opened, and two male Pinkshirts escorted a newly-discharged white female prisoner outside.

She was not much over thirty years old, and had been beautiful and shapely when she had entered the Self-Esteem Center many months ago. Now, she was thin with malnourishment, her eyes had crow's feet, there were premature gray strands in her medium-brown hair...and the last two fingers of her left hand were missing. On the occasion of a real (and therefore pampered) criminal having cut off those fingers of hers, the duty surgeon at the center--well indoctrinated about the rationing of care--had made efficient double use of the act of sealing her wound, by first inserting into her left hand the tracking chip she had been due to receive anyway. He could have reattached the fingers, but he hadn't bothered.

And now, Summer Rand, the wife of Evan Rand, was free to leave.

"We're proud of the progress you've made," the elder of the two men told Summer. "You had a really serious case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder when you first joined us; but now you have every chance of becoming a thoroughly harmonized unit of the collective."

Finding the boldness to speak--which took an effort, since both of these men had inflicted savage beatings on her, just for fun, during her imprisonment--Summer asked, "Is my...is my _partner_ Evan also being released?"

The younger Pinkshirt smiled. "There, you see? You've learned to stop calling him by that disgusting tribal title; this is one way we know you're better. And it wasn't so hard to stop using his last name as your own, was it? Anyway, Citizen Evan Rand will be discharged from the Joliet Self-Esteem Center before another three days have passed. Then you and he will be able to locate each other using public databases; he'll have a tracking chip, too."

"And, um....our bioproducts?"

"I honestly don't know where they were assigned. You can probably find out eventually, maybe even get to visit them with their new caregivers."

The elder guard resumed speaking: "You understand the uses of your chip, right? You can use it twice a day at any Collective Nutritional Center, to receive a maximum of one kilogram of food and two liters of water per day. It also entitles you to space-available rail transportation, lodging at any Collective Dormitory, and one physician's visit every eight months."

"If you can persuade a Party official to endorse you," the younger man advised, "you should be able to get accepted into a labor union. That will make things easier for you."

The senior Pinkshirt gave Summer a friendly pat on the right shoulder--a shoulder he himself had intentionally dislocated on the second day of their acquaintance. "In the meantime, when you stay at a Collective Dormitory, remember to avoid hate speech and judging. Carry with you the lessons of oneness. Good karma to you."

So Summer Rand, Summer Heron to the regime, walked with unsteady steps into nominal freedom. She carried lessons, all right. She would submit to almost any further indignity, if only she could find Evan, and have some hope that they would also find their children.
 
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SeaStar, the image of what Summer has just suffered is another image I want my readers to remember. When you hear it said that an unrestrained, all-controlling central authority is the solution to all human problems.... remember that central authorities in the real world have treated nonconformists the way my fictional Pinkshirts treated the fictional Summer.
 
"Citizen Heron," huffed the chilly-faced woman supervising the Robert Owens Collective Dormitory, "I have been made aware of your un-mutual deviationist conduct. It is of course our hope that your self-esteem treatment has cured you of your defiance to the collective; but added reinforcement is never amiss. You will therefore study the memorial text of this establishment before you are assigned a bunk."

This was the first time Summer had used a computer since before her imprisonment. Prior to getting arrested for being a serious Christian, she had just had time to get used to presenting her eyes to a sensor device that would identify her by the retinas and the irises before she could go online; and now, things had changed again. As a tracking-chip recipient, her microchip took precedence over other forms of identification; so at least logging on was now more comfortable and convenient. But also sharply limited. She could not yet attempt to search for information about her husband; in fact, ALL she could do was read the article the supervisor intended her to read. Apparently, it was material routinely shown to new arrivals at this particular lodging place.

It was the biography of the man for whom this dormitory was named. Summer had at least once met a man someplace named Robert Owens; but until now, she had never heard of the particular Mr. Owens whom the Fairness Party and its Campaign Against Hate so revered. This Robert Owens, a native of Britain, had been a small-c communist well before Karl Marx developed capital-C Communism. Settling in the United States, Owens had worked fanatically in Indiana and New York to encourage lockstep collectivism, and to destroy both free enterprise and faith in God.

While reading this biography--and wondering if it were genuine, or made up--Summer could not help remembering her old principal back at Smoky Lake East High School. Yes, Mrs. Lewiston would have admired Robert Owens, if Mrs. Lewiston had bothered to study history enough to find out about him.

Interestingly, the article mentioned that there was an Equalityball team in Wichita named the Robert Owens Rangers. In the short time that Equalityball had existed so far (and of course, Summer had been in prison for part of that period), Summer had never before heard of any Equalityball team being given a name that honored a specific individual. Usually, they would be called something like "Team Solstice," or "The Unanimous Brigade." It was thus ironic, but also understandable, that an exception would be made to honor individually a man who had fought to extinguish individuality.

When Summer had finished reading, the supervisor approached her and said, "Well, what is everything?"

With an immeasurable weariness of soul, Summer Heron Rand replied, "The collective is everything."

And so she was allowed to sleep that night in the Robert Owens Collective Dormitory of the city of Leavenworth. Only, she slept not IN a bunk, but on the floor directly UNDER a bunk. This, because a man who was more in favor with the Campaign Against Hate demanded that she allow him to pile his belongings on top of her assigned bunk; and Summer being a despised believer, the supervisor had ordered her to submit to this abuse. "It will teach you the true spirit of unselfishness," the reptilian woman lectured her, "as opposed to the greedy capitalistic attitudes on which your bigoted racist superstition is based."

But at least Summer was not otherwise molested, and she did manage to fall asleep. She dreamed of being back home in Smoky Lake, where she saw her parents alive and young.
 
You see, Zella, dictatorships do this all the time; they replace a real standard of right and wrong with a simplistic demand for unlimited loyalty to the dictatorship. Thus, the man who picks on Summer in the Collective Dormitory is not seen by the supervisor as doing any wrong, because his picking on Summer takes nothing away from his obedience to the dictatorship. Meanwhile, Summer is treated as less than human because her loyalties to Christ and to her family are in competition with the political loyalty the dictatorship demands. Christians in the Soviet Union were mistreated very similarly.
 
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"So why do you think Brazil was picked?" the Hawaiian tour guide asked Major Yang. "Chile would have counted better as a small nation." Ralph Kono, the guide, was referring to the outcome of the United Nations choosing a member country to lead the Commission on Small Nations.

"Brazil and Chile are equally independent, being the only mainland South American countries NOT belonging to either the Mexican Alliance or the Venezuelan Alliance," replied the Chinese officer; "but Brazil's language separation from the nations adjoining it was considered as a figurative smallness that outweighed Chile's literal smallness. We're contented with the fact that India didn't get the appointment." Yang was not revealing any secrets; it was well known that China didn't want India growing any stronger, since India was now probably the only nation on Earth which would have a chance fighting toe-to-toe against China all by itself.

"As for us," Bert Randall remarked, "WE'RE contented that China threw its support to the Pacific Federation." He meant, in connection with that Federation inviting Hawaii to join it.

The three men were hiking along a tourist trail through a fern forest in Puna, the easternmost region of Hawaii's Big Island. The visit to Hawaii was mostly for the Australian's benefit, so he could pick up a sense of how native Hawaiians were feeling about the invitation since China had endorsed the idea...though Yang Sung-Kuo had been interested in seeing the geothermal power-generating projects in Puna. As a courtesy to local authorities, the Major had relinquished his sidearm to Hawaiian police for the duration of the visit. He wasn't expecting to have cause to shoot anyone.

Bert, for his part, was armed with a high-capability dataphone. He had its twin optical sensors extended to the left and right of the device, with just enough parallax between their views that they could produce holographic images of all they saw. His sister Emma and her husband had never been to Hawaii, so they would love to see his images.

"Hardly anyone here is against the new merger," said Ralph Kono. "Going everyplace in outrigger canoes began getting old very fast, once we realized how much we had given up in isolating ourselves. The United, I mean the Diversity States won't take us back--not because they're angry at us, but exactly because they don't want to change their position that our being American territory was a bad thing."

Major Yang fell silent, fading out of the conversation. He was thinking about an excursion he and Bert had taken within China, some days before. They had gone into Yunnan, a province bordering on Tibet, and had looked at mountains whose tree cover was only barely starting to come back from past years of clear-cutting. Yang had allowed himself a risky degree of candor on that day, speaking to Bert about how terribly Chinese rule had decimated the Tibetan people. The cultural genocide had been far worse than the old South African apartheid which all good Communists knew how to vilify. So how was it that isolation from America--indeed, from the FORMER America which had been the enemy--was bad for Hawaii, while no sane person could deny that isolation from China would have been GOOD for Tibet?

Yang was tugged out of his contemplation by Ralph the guide abruptly shouting "Back! Run for it!" They had emerged from the fern forest, into a rocky area with lava tubes...and five native Hawaiian men with weapons had emerged from a hole to charge toward the three hikers.
 
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Ralph was already calling for police on his wristcom as he dragged Bert back the way they had come. The Australian, while not suicidally reckless, did not like running away from enemies. The more so, since he was sure that these were not mere robbers, but fanatics of the revived Ke Ea Hawaii movement. Bert himself was probably their target in a planned ambush, because they would have heard of his role in encouraging their provisional government to join the fledgling Pacific Federation. They didn't want ANY ties with despised non-Polynesians.

Yang Sung-Kuo stood his ground with a look of contemplative detachment. He of course also knew about the Ke Ea Hawaii movement. He could even sympathize with it a little, since it entailed a wish for a society with moral restraints on people's behavior. Yang knew quite well how, around the time he had been a schoolboy, Hawaii had enjoyed the dubious honor of competing with California for permissiveness toward extremely dubious lifestyles. The Polynesian separatists had not been backers of that trend, and it must have aggravated their dislike of being connected with mainland America.

But none of this gave these Hawaiian supremacists a right to kill people wantonly. And Yang thought it hypocritical of them, hostile as they were to America, to be carrying metal knives and axes that had probably been manufactured in the continental United States while the United States had still had manufacturing worth mentioning.

Major Yang also assumed the assailants to be chiefly after Bert; and this was confirmed when only one charged at the civilian-suited Chinese man, while the others chased the Australian and the tour guide. The lone thug swung his axe overhand at the shorter man's head; but Yang simply moved in close enough to catch hold of the axe-haft between the axe-head and the uppermost gripping hand. Though the Hawaiian was much larger than Yang, his swing was stopped as if by a stone wall. Yang's free fist then shot into the attacker's solar plexus with a force just short of killing force. This man had not yet hit the ground before Yang, carrying the axe in case it might be useful, was pursuing the pursuers of his companions.

Already another thug, also with an axe, had closed upon Ralph Kono. The burly guide had narrowly evaded an axe-blow, and was now grappling with his countryman. The other three men, all with knives, were all after Bert. Bert, however, had yanked his belt out of its loops on the run, and was fending off the leading knifer's attacks by whipping the belt buckle at that man's face.

Before the last two fanatics could surround Bert, Yang came in behind them and rapped each one on the back of the head with the back of the axe-head. They dropped. The knifer engaged against Bert swung around to see what was happening to his friends--only to have Bert jump him from behind, punch him in the short ribs, and fasten a wrestler's sleeper hold on him. Seeing that Bert had this man under control, Major Yang turned and made a similar move against the man Ralph was fighting.

With all five enemies put out of action, Yang asked Ralph "Are you hurt?"--it being already plain that Bert was intact. "I'm all right," the guide assured him; "and I apologize for the unscheduled--"

Suddenly, a short distance farther into the fern forest, three of the lofty tree-ferns fell almost simultaneously, as if cut by an invisible giant lawnmower. The cause of their fall was not instantly visible. Bert and Ralph stared, baffled....until Yang, dropping the axe, used both his hands to pull his friends toward the lava tunnels again.

Major Yang did have an idea what it was that had felled those tree ferns and was now felling more.
 
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More tree-ferns toppled as the three men retreated onto the rocky ground. A blurry, rippling shape, like the way a man underwater might look when seen from above the water, leaped into view. Yang recognized the technology: a kind of holographic projection device, worn like a vest. It couldn't make the user invisible, but its distortion of his appearance made his exact movements hard to follow or anticipate.

Several nations had this device by now; but the weapon that had sliced through the ferns...

"Throw rocks!" Yang shouted to Bert in Spanish. "All the rocks you can, into that blur!"

Major Yang and Bert began flinging chunks of lava rock, and Ralph soon joined in. Two of the rocks they threw were split apart in mid-flight by an unseen force...but the pieces continued on the same trajectory. This wielder of cutting-edge technology (in more than one sense) had been overconfident with his devices, forgetting that he was not immune to crude kinetic impact. This was ironic, since he was clearly an ally of the five Hawaiian racists who had relied on primitive means of attack.

Before the invisible sword could reach its intended victims, the wielder was battered into unconsciousness. The blurred shape fell forward onto the shallow but rugged lava slope; and something in the fall shut off or broke the holographic-blur device. There, face down, lay a man who didn't look Hawaiian. Asian, maybe.

"Crashers!" exclaimed Bert; this was a current bit of Australian slang, used in reaction to anything startling.

"You two, stay back! There may be something here that you're not allowed to know about!" Saying "There MAY be" was misdirection; Yang already knew that there WAS something Bert and Ralph were not cleared to know. He went to the unconscious final assailant, and used a stick to probe around. When the stick was cut halfway through by something unseen, the Major could narrow his search. In short order, he found the safe-to-grasp handle of...the micro-whip.

Nanotechnology, part of the science China had confiscated from America when cancelling American debt and cancelling American freedom at the same time, had made possible the creation of micro-wire which was almost entirely invisible to the naked eye. A whip made of this material could, with only muscle power to drive it, slice through most material substances. Because it would not automatically cut through everything by merely touching it at all, the weapon could safely be carried in a case or holster; but once set in motion, it could be made to cut through people, doors, and so on, as effortlessly as it had cut through the tree-ferns here. And since it neither was made of any true metal, nor generated any electromagnetic field, it was very hard to detect--thus, an excellent weapon to be smuggled where a gun could not be brought. Yang knew a few agents of his government who had used micro-whips in the field.

The attachment of the micro-wire to the handle the user grasped included an equally sophisticated sort of adhesive at wire's end inside the handle, which could hold the wire and not be sliced by it even as the weapon whirled.

Cautiously determining the irregular line along which the micro-whip lay on the ground, Yang worked flat stones under portions of it and gently lifted, so he could place it in more of a straight line reaching out from its handle. This way, it wouldn't flail around and cut him when he retracted the wire, like retracting a tape measure. Once the wire was contained and the weapon rendered safe, he pocketed it. "Mr. Randall, Mr. Kono, you can come over here now....Mr. Kono, have you ever seen this man?"

"I don't think so," replied the tour guide, once he had been able to look at the unconscious man's bruised face. "Nor the other attackers."

"I suppose you need us to keep quiet about what we saw?" guessed Bert.

"It would be best for everyone." Yang produced his satellite-linked data device. "I need to call home, right now, on a secure channel. You two go off some distance; look out in case any of our enemies wake up, but I trust the cops will get here soon."

"Can you tell us anything?"

"This much, Mr. Randall: that the new Ke Ea Hawaii movement is NOT as purely Polynesian as it professes to be. Their friend with technology is a Chinese Triad gangster. Yes, they still exist, though not as powerful as in the previous generation; by bribery and other means, the remnant of the Triads can still evade our detection some of the time."

"What do they want in Hawaii that's MORE important to them now than in the days of the U.S.A.?" asked Ralph.

"A gateway for smuggling, most likely. The other end of the smuggling route probably is not in the Diversity States; my guess is Aztlan. But this is getting close to the old I'd-have-to-kill-you joke, so let's drop it; move off, as I said."

When he had his privacy, Major Yang made his call to Beijing to report the incident. He knew that his companions had not learned anything which would make their termination or memory-wiping mandatory; but he hoped that he would not have to stop travelling with Bert Randall. He had gotten to like the adventurous Aussie.
 
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Four days after Summer Heron Rand had been released from the Leavenworth Self-Esteem Center, the doors of the Joliet Self-Esteem Center swung open, and a bald man walked out. Not naturally bald; the administration of this self-esteem center had gotten the idea of shaving the heads of both men and women, in a sort of equality symbolism.

Evan Rand, husband of Summer and father of her four children, had been a licensed physical therapist in New York City at the time the United States was discontinued. One of his wealthiest clients had been a highly-placed labor union official, a man destined to have an especially easy time of it in the transition to a neo-Stalinist regime. Evan had tried to avoid the subject of this client when speaking to the Havens family, sworn enemies of crooked labor unions; but he had been hoping to lead this client to a saving faith in Jesus.

It had been a legitimate hope; such things had happened; but for Evan, it had ended badly. One day, the union official had gotten the idea that the new regime's official abolition of marriage meant he should at once abandon his own wife and children, and had seemed pleased to perform this kind of civic duty. When Evan had dared to say that this was wrong, the client had played Herod Antipas to Evan's John the Baptist, omitting only the beheading. Arrested for "hate speech," Evan had already been serving his sentence when Summer had likewise been arrested for protesting HIS arrest. Which was why all four of the Rand children had been stolen by the "village" that supposedly was needed for everything.

But now, Evan was free, sort of. Like his wife, he had a tracking chip inside his body. Emerging from the former Joliet Penitentiary, he remembered an old movie, and wished crazily for Dan Ackroyd to be waiting out front with a car. Silly thought....

But there WAS a man named Dan out there--with a pedicab rather than a motor vehicle. Dan Salisbury, much less worn out by the outside world than Evan was by the inside, exclaimed, "Evan! Chil and I rented a ride for you!" Pedalling the conveyance himself, he brought it closer to the discharged prisoner. "And look who's with us!"

Huddled in the seat behind Dan's saddle were two women. Chilena Salisbury, also looking fit and healthy, was holding and comforting--

"SUMMER!!!"

The love of Evan's life now found the strength to slump out of the pedicab, and to totter toward the love of her life. Evan, himself not a hundred percent healed from prison beatings, made for her as fast as he could. They met and clinched with a creaking tenderness, a wobbly passion, clinging together and keeping each other from falling down. Presently, after letting them squeeze and kiss each other in the initial joyous disbelief, Dan lifted Summer bodily back into the pedicab, then helped Evan into it also.

Chilena handed something to Evan: a Spanish-style folding fan. "Take this and fan the back of Dan's head for a moment." Puzzled, Evan did as he was bidden; and Dan said, "That feels good."

Summer kissed her husband and explained to him: "They had me do the same when they found me in Missouri, trying to get to Joliet. Chilena told me that it would be easier to persuade the authorities to allow us to live with them if they could say they wanted us for their pleasure. That fanning was the pleasure; so now you and I are part of their degenerate lowlife show-business commune!" Summer laughed hysterically, then wept hysterically. While renewing their embrace, Evan finally noticed that two of Summer's fingers were missing.

Chilena saw that Evan had noticed, so she remarked, "Some idiot thought that removing her wedding-ring finger could remove the vows between her and you. They ARE idiots."

Dan got the pedicab underway to where he would return it, thence placing all of them on a train. Evan held and kissed Summer until her weeping subsided, then asked all present: "Where are our children?"

"We don't know yet," Dan admitted. "Got to break through one locked door at a time."
 
That micro-whip sounds like quite a weapon!

I'm glad Evan and Summer are back together. And I hope they can find their children.
 
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